As Siskiyou County’s Reserves Shrink, Its Executive Office Has Grown

When Terry Barber announced in December 2019 that she was retiring as Siskiyou County Administrator, she left behind a county at war with itself.

On January 6, 2020, roughly 325 county employees represented by the Organized Employees of Siskiyou County walked off the job. Labor negotiator Steve Allen told the Siskiyou Daily News the strike was not against the public. “It is against the Board of Supervisors and CAO Terry Barber,” he said.

Workers said they were underpaid compared to peers in neighboring counties. They said turnover had reached 60 percent in some departments. They said the Board had given itself and department heads a $300-per-month deferred compensation payment while most frontline workers received nothing. A hearing officer reviewed the evidence and issued recommendations. The Board refused to follow them.

Ten weeks later, Angela Davis walked in the door.

The Board had approved Davis’s five-year employment contract on February 18, 2020. She started March 23 — three days after California’s first statewide stay-at-home order. She was the new administrator of a rural county of 43,000 people, a workforce in open revolt, and an economy about to be upended by a pandemic.

Within 18 months, she had restructured the office around her.

The Numbers

Siskiyou County budget books tell the story in salary schedules, and the trajectory is clear.

In FY2019-20, Barber’s final full year, the County Administrator earned $181,800. One position sat below her — an Assistant County Administrator, with a salary ceiling of $101,730. The combined authorized cost of the executive leadership tier: $283,530 per year.

By FY2021-22 — Davis’s second full fiscal year — that structure was gone. The assistant administrator had been eliminated. In its place were three new Deputy County Administrator positions, each carrying a salary ceiling of $103,606. Davis’s salary had risen to $190,050. The combined authorized cost of those four positions: $500,868.

The three deputies were created in FY2020-21, Davis’s first year. The county was operating under a state and federal emergency declaration. It was drawing on COVID relief funds to keep its books balanced.

By the current fiscal year, FY2024-25, the cost has continued to climb. The FY2024-25 Statement of Allocated Positions and Salaries shows:

• County Administrator Angela Davis: $239,884
• Deputy CAO, Chief Fiscal Officer: up to $131,860
• Deputy CAO, Personnel & Risk Management: up to $126,717
• Deputy CAO, Policy, Planning & Natural Resources: up to $126,717

Combined ceiling for those four positions: $625,177. That is 120 percent more than the $283,530 authorized when Davis took office — an increase of $342,000 per year for the top tier alone.

Davis’s own salary rose 32 percent over that period, from $181,800 to $239,884.

The county’s General Fund, meanwhile, is heading in the opposite direction. The unassigned available balance was $5.2 million at the end of FY2022-23 and $6.7 million at the end of FY2023-24. The FY2024-25 adopted budget projects an unassigned net position of negative $5.9 million. At the June 2025 budget hearing, Board members and Deputy CAO Lawson — one of the three deputies Davis created — discussed the possibility of a $10 million deficit in FY2025-26.

What We Don’t Yet Know

Siskiyou News has confirmed the facts above through budget books and state payroll records. What those records do not explain is the reasoning behind the restructuring.

Under California county practice, new classified positions are authorized through Board of Supervisors resolutions amending the official Salary Schedule and Position Allocation List. These actions are typically embedded in broader personnel resolutions during budget adoption or labor negotiations — not presented as standalone items with individual staff reports. No resolution specifically establishing the Deputy County Administrator classifications was located in publicly available Board records.

That means the Board voted to create these positions. The vote is a matter of public record. But the staff report justifying that vote — if one exists — has not yet been located.

A Public Records Act request for the authorizing resolution and any accompanying staff report has been submitted to the County office. Siskiyou News will report what those records show.

We have also submitted questions to County Administrator Davis and have requested comment from the Board of Supervisors. This story will be updated as responses are received.

What Comes Next

Davis has announced she will retire in July 2026 — the same month Barber originally planned to leave six years earlier. The Board will soon conduct another administrator search, negotiate another employment contract, and decide what county government looks like going forward.

The three deputy positions Davis created do not automatically disappear when she does. They are now established classifications in the county’s Salary Schedule and Position Allocation List. Eliminating or consolidating them would require another Board action. Whether any supervisor intends to raise that question is not yet known.

What is known: the next administrator will inherit a fiscal situation that Davis’s predecessor did not face. The reserves are thinner. The structural commitments are larger. And the workforce that went on strike in January 2020 — still employed largely by the same county, under the same Board — never got the hearing officer’s recommendations implemented.

Siskiyou News will continue to follow this story.

Source notes: Salary figures are drawn from Siskiyou County adopted budget books, FY2019-20 through FY2024-25, and confirmed against the California State Controller’s Government Compensation in California database. Davis’s employment contract and start date are from Board of Supervisors agenda materials. General Fund balance figures are from Schedule 1 and Schedule 2 of the adopted budget books. The $10 million deficit reference is from Board of Supervisors minutes, June 17, 2025. Strike coverage sourced from the Siskiyou Daily News (December 27, 2019) and Yreka News (January 6, 2020). A Public Records Act request is pending with the County.

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