Tom Bunton has left as San Bernardino County Counsel after serving in the role of the county government’s top lawyer for less than four years.
Bunton, who was formerly assistant county counsel with the County of San Diego, assumed the county counsel post in San Bernardino County in January 2022.
The office of county counsel is the county’s stable of staff attorneys.
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.
Laura Feingold, who was elevated by Bunton to the position of chief assistant county counsel 20 months previously, last month assumed the position of consigliere to the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors last month.
On the agenda for a closed door executive session of the board of supervisors that took place prior to the public portion of the board’s June 18, 2025 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 was to hold the position of county counsel was in the offing, but no official action was announced following that closed session. Officially, at least, Bunton remained as county counsel, though at times during the year, Feingold took his place during open board meetings.
Previously, 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 on April 1, 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 in April. He remained as county counsel in the intervening time. Thereafter, the June 18 evaluation apparently took place, but the rules of confidentiality that attend such evaluations prevent any public disclosure of the evaluation’s upshot. Nevertheless, by late May, there were rumors extant within county governmental circles that Feingold’s stock was on the rise.
Whether or not the board of supervisors was absolutely satisfied with Bunton’s performance, it was widely believed that he had rock solid job security for as long as he wanted to remain as county counsel, given the amount of inside information – much of it potentially and actually damaging to the members of the board of supervisors – he had become privy to.
From the outset of his time as county counsel, Bunton, like virtually every county counsel before him, had 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 had been present during virtually all closed door executive meetings of the board throughout his tenure. 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 an 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.
Bunton was provided with an annual salary of $346,497.76, in addition to which he was 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.
His 24 years of employment as a public official entitles him to a pension calculated at 3 percent time each of the 24 years he was a public employee, or 72 percent, of his highest annual salary, that is $249,478.38 every year for the rest of his life. That pension is subject to a 3 percent maximum cost of living increase each year. That pension is to be paid by both San Bernardino County and San Diego County. Upon his death, his wife will be eligible to continue to draw a beneficiary pension equal to one-half his full pension.
It is expected that Bunton’s consummate professionalism and adherence to the principles of his profession mean that the fashion in which he comported himself while in the role of county counsel – skillfully purchasing the silence of so many top tier county employees when they made their exodus from the county – he will likewise take his knowledge with regard to many of the dark, darker and darkest secrets pertaining to graft encrusted San Bernardino County government to the grave.
Feingold, 45, is homegrown, having attended San Bernardino State University as a college undergraduate. She was not on a trajectory to become a lawyer from the outset, having originally obtained a bachelor of science degree in accounting, which she attended fro 1998 until 2002, though she did take many of her courses at CSUSB’s College of Business and Public Administration. She attended Loyola Law School in Los Angeles from 2002 until 2005, passing the bar in 2005. She went to work immediately with the law firm of Best Best & Krieger in Ontario, one the top municipal law firms in California, remaining there as an associate until 2014, handling a wide variety of municipal and private matters. In 2014, she left Best Best & Krieger to join the law firm of Cota Cole, also based in Ontario. She remained there for a year and six months, during which time she divided her time as a bankruptcy attorney and serving as the city attorney with Chowchilla. In September 2015, she gambled, leaving what prospectively could have been a very lucrative practice with Cota Cole to take on what was essentially an entry level position as a deputy counsel with the Office of San Bernardino County Counsel. She spent five years defending San Bernardino County and other related governmental entities. In November 2020, while Michelle Blakemore was county council, Feingold was promoted to a supervising deputy county counsel. Her litigative ability made an impression on Bunton, who three months after becoming county counsel, promoted Feingold to the position of principal assistant county counsel, in which capacity she managed a team of 12 civil litigators and grew the in-house workers’ compensation team to four attorneys, while supervising the handling of roughly 400 cases against the county being handled by in-house and outside counsel.
In February 2024, she was made the chief assistant county counsel, overseeing all litigation filed by or against the county or other related governmental entities. In that role she advised seven county departments.
Feingold fits well within the San Bernardino County scheme of governance. In 2018, San Bernardino county conferred upon her the Public Service Recognition Award for Excellence and in 2023, she was provided with the Dwight Herr Perpetual Award for Outstanding Appellate Practice issued by the County Counsels’ Association of California.
-Mark Gutglueck