Those manning crucial posts within San Bernardino County government have been thrown into a tizzy over reports, none of which could be confirmed at press time, that County Counsel Tom Bunton is on his way out as the county’s top in-house lawyer.
The office of county counsel is the county’s stable of staff attorneys. Bunton, who was formerly assistant county counsel with the County of San Diego, assumed the role of county counsel in San Bernardino county in January 2022.
In recent days and weeks there have been mixed signals emanating out of floors four and five of the county administrative building located at 385 North Arrowhead Avenue in downtown San Bernardino.
One indication was that Laura Feingold, who was elevated by Bunton to the position of chief assistant county counsel 16 months ago, will be sliding into the post which is yet officially held by Bunton.
Undergirding that were a series of developments this week relating to the board of supervisors and the office of county counsel.
The board this week, on Tuesday June 10, held its regularly scheduled meeting. It was next scheduled to meet on June 24. The board customarily holds its regularly scheduled meetings on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month or, more rarely, the first and third Tuesdays of each month. Abruptly, however, after the close of normal business hours today, Friday, June 13, the June 24 meeting was canceled. Instead, announcement was given that the board would hold a specially called meeting next week, not on Tuesday but Wednesday June 18. Based upon the contents of the agenda, it appeared that the matters that would have been discussed and potentially voted upon at the June 24 meeting were going to be taken up at the June 18 meeting.
Of note is that the board of supervisors has no meetings scheduled for July, such that there will be a 48-day gap between the June 24 meeting and its next regularly scheduled meeting on August 5.
Placed on the agenda for a closed door executive session of the board to take place prior to the public portion of the June 18 meeting was an item worded thusly: Public Employee Appointment (Government Code section 54957) Title: County Counsel
That seemed to imply that a change in who will hold the position of county counsel is in the offing.
At a meeting of the board on April 1, the supervisors, in a closed session engaged in evaluations of the job performance of both Bunton and County Chief Executive Officer Luther Snoke. When the board emerged from that closed session, there was no report of any action taken. If an elected body takes action during a closed session, under the Ralph M. Brown Act, California’s open public meeting law, a report of that action is supposed to be made. In most jurisdictions in California, as is the case in San Bernardino County, the primary counsel for the agency – in this case, Bunton – makes that announcement. Since Bunton and Snoke were the subject of the evaluations, they were most likely not present during the April 1 closed session as is normally the case, although that is not publicly known to absolutely be the case. As there was no report out from the meeting, it is unknown, precisely whether Bunton was given a positive evaluation.
He has remained as county counsel in the intervening time. Nevertheless, rumors are extant within county governmental circles that Feingold’s stock is on the rise.
Bunton, at least until recently, was believed to have rock solid job security, given the amount of inside information – much of it potentially and actually damaging to the members of the board of supervisors – he is privy to.
From the outset of his time as county counsel, Bunton has been entrusted with a compendium of exceedingly sensitive information pertaining to how the county is run, places and occasions where its employees and both low and high officials have made mistakes, engaged in wrongdoing and/or misfeasance and malfeasance. Bunton has been present during virtually all closed door executive meetings of the board. In those sessions, in addition to Bunton providing the board with briefings relating to pending or ongoing litigation, real estate purchases or sales were discussed, negotiations for the sale or purchase of real estate took place, the job performance of key county staff members was evaluated, discussion of staff hirings, discipline and firings occurred and board members disclosed information or details with regard to action in which they were involved. The disclosures and information brought forth during these closed sessions are supposed to be held in the strictest confidence.
Very early in his tenure as county counsel, Bunton became aware that the district attorney’s office under District Attorney Jason Anderson had neglected to monitor the county’s real estate fraud prosecution program funding in violation of California Government Code § 27388. Around the same time, Bunton learned of a extortion scheme then-County Chief Executive Officer Leonard Hernandez was engaging in which he was withholding from disclosure information about bribe money being filtered to members of the board of supervisors. When press efforts to obtain documentation that would unmask the nature of the blackmailing that was ongoing, including Hernandez’s meeting calendar, through the California Public Records Act, Bunton choreographed county officials through the crisis by instructing them to simply brass it out and refuse to hand over the requested documentation.
When the county botched its emergency response to the 2023 arctic storm that blanketed the county’s mountain communities, which included the deaths of several individuals who were snowed in and isolated, Bunton shepherded the county out of harm’s way. When Russian mobsters hacked into the sheriff’s department’s computer and communication system, with the entire system rendered unusable and at risk, not to mention gigabytes of information relating to highly questionable actions by law enforcement officers now potentially at risk of discovery by the public at large, Bunton advised the county to accede to paying a $1.1 million ransom so the sheriff’s department could recover control of its database. When the county board of supervisors at last resolved to be rid of Hernandez as county chief executive officer, Bunton assisted in formulating a strategy to freeze him out of the county administrative suite while he was on vacation and then negotiated a $650,000 payout to keep him silent about the damaging information pertaining to the members of the board he had accumulated while he was running the county.
Bunton attended and graduated from Indiana State University Kelley School of Business with a four-year degree in 1988 and thereafter attended Georgetown University’s School of Law graduating in 1993. He practiced law in Indiana and passed the California Bar in 1997. He thereafter worked for the law firms of Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps in San Diego and then Gibson Dunn & Crutcher in its San Diego Office before working as a litigator with Baker McKenzie for a short spell. He began as a senior deputy county counsel with San Diego County in September 2001, remaining in that post until 2016, when he promoted to chief deputy county counsel. In March 2019, he reached the number two position in that office as assistant county counsel.
As of right now, Bunton is being provided with an annual salary of $346,497.76, in addition to which he is provided with $27,354.34 in perquisites and pay add-ons and $150,505.54 in benefits for a total annual compensation of $524,357.64.
While Bunton’s departure from the graft encrusted San Bernardino County government has not been confirmed, those in the know say that by virtue of his having demonstrated skill in purchasing the silence of so many top tier county employees when they have made their exodus from the county, he should be able to wring from the taxpayers’ stewards no less for himself and can look forward to a payout of approaching $1 million to go quietly into the good night.