Days after the Tehama County Grand Jury charged her with misconduct in office, setting the stage for possibly removing her from the Board of Supervisors, Pati Nolen called the indictment “political theater” and punishment for asking the tough questions.
District Attorney Matt Rogers announced the charges on July 1 in a news release.
He said a grand jury investigation uncovered evidence that Nolen secretly recorded a confidential meeting without the consent or knowledge of other people at the meetings.
Nolen also “removed from closed session (meetings) private and confidential personnel material related to a county employee without permission or authority to do so; and had deliberately lied and misled the media and the public regarding her use of alcohol on county property as well as filed retaliatory false police reports,” Rogers said.
Nolen’s actions range from potential misdemeanors to felonies, the DA said.
Tehama County Supervisor Pati Nolen
“Let me be absolutely clear: this is not about a cup. This is about control. There were no complaints filed against me, not until I spoke up. Not until I began asking hard questions. Not until the now infamous DUI call, a call that has since spiraled into a full-scale campaign to remove me from office, without due process, without legal representation, and without even the basic decency of transparency,” Nolen wrote in a statement she emailed to the Record Searchlight.
“I have faithfully performed my duties as an elected County Supervisor. And for that, I have been met not with fairness, but with secrecy, retaliation, and now public spectacle. It is not the first time Tehama County has responded this way to women who speak too plainly,” she added.
The supervisor is scheduled to appear in Tehama County Superior Court on Aug. 12, Rogers said.
If Nolen is convicted, “instead of being subject to incarceration or fines, Supervisor Nolen will be immediately removed from office, which is why this type of case is considered quasi-criminal in nature,” Rogers said.
The grand jury accusations came a month after Tehama County Sheriff Dave Kain said his office was investigating criminal allegations associated with certain members of the Board of Supervisors and specific county department heads and which stem from an alleged false police report of DUI claims against Nolen.
Kain said on March 25, after a supervisors meeting, someone called Red Bluff police from the Tehama County Administration building before Nolen left the building.
Police stopped Nolen about 30 minutes after the call and evaluated her for a possible DUI, but Nolen had “no signs of intoxication whatsoever,” Kain said.
Kain did not return a phone message Wednesday asking for the status of the investigation.
In the complaint against Nolen, it states in part that she left behind a cup after exiting the March 25 board meeting. “Due to her previous attempts to secretly record information … the supervisors examined the cup for a recording device and instead discovered that it contained an alcoholic beverage.”
Ross has said his office tested the cup and the test “confirmed the presence of alcohol in the cup but not the type of alcohol.”
In a phone interview with a Record Searchlight reporter, Nolen said she will have to hire her own attorney because the county will not defend her.
“There’s a lot of made-up stuff in this indictment and I am going to fight it and I am going to win. It is so silly,” Nolen said.
She said the district attorney’s office has not told her how the cup was tested for alcohol.
Another charge against Nolen is that she recorded a confidential agenda review meeting on March 24 without the knowledge or permission of the other people present.
“Agenda review is not a closed session meeting,” Nolen said. “Those are not confidential. We are not supposed to be discussing anything confidential in those meetings. Those meetings are to go over who, why, what and how much money is it going to cost the county.”
Nolen also was upset the Grand Jury did not interview her for the investigation.
“I was not aware that this was coming. This was done very last minute with the Grand Jury … and I never spoke to the Grand Jury about this,” she said.
David Benda covers business, development and anything else that comes up for the USA TODAY Network in Redding. He also writes the weekly “Buzz on the Street” column. He’s part of a team of dedicated reporters that investigate wrongdoing, cover breaking news and tell other stories about your community. Reach him on X, formerly Twitter, @DavidBenda_RS or by phone at 1-530-338=8323. To support and sustain this work, please subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: Tehama supervisor responds to charges of misconduct while in office