Sonoma County supervisors have dropped their push to ask voters this November to rewrite Measure P, the 2020 ballot law that gave the county’s civilian watchdog real power over the Sheriff’s Office — a retreat that hands a win to the advocates who spent the spring fighting the rewrite.
The Board of Supervisors said Thursday, June 11, that it would not pursue amendments to Measure P on the fall ballot. The same day, it named a new interim chief for the oversight office, the Independent Office of Law Enforcement Review and Outreach, or IOLERO.
Measure P passed in November 2020 with nearly two-thirds of the vote, amid the 2020 wave of demands for police accountability. It replaced a toothless 2016 county ordinance and gave IOLERO the authority to audit the Sheriff’s Office, investigate whistleblower complaints and — the provision that has drawn the most blood — issue subpoenas.
That subpoena power is exactly what the Sheriff’s Office and the deputies’ union have been fighting in court. In March, they lost. On March 26, the First District Court of Appeal ruled that state law grants subpoena authority to sheriff oversight bodies, that IOLERO is one of them and that it could subpoena deputies in a whistleblower investigation. The court reversed a trial judge who had sided with Sheriff Eddie Engram and the Sonoma County Deputy Sheriffs’ Association. The sheriff and the union have since asked the California Supreme Court to take the case.
Even with the ruling in hand, county leaders spent the spring weighing whether to send voters a revised Measure P anyway. Board Chair Rebecca Hermosillo led that effort, casting it as a fix for “ambiguity” in the law rather than an attempt to weaken it. She has said she voted for the measure and supports it. Getting anything onto the November ballot would have meant a sprint. Final language was due to the Registrar of Voters by Aug. 7, and the county would first have had to bargain the changes with the deputies’ unions behind closed doors. The registrar put the cost of a countywide measure at $800,000 to $1.2 million.
Oversight advocates saw a rush, and a risk. On June 8, the coalition Community Law Enforcement Accountability Now — CLEAN — sent supervisors a letter signed by more than 130 residents and community groups, urging the board not to “rewrite, replace, or substantially alter” Measure P before it has ever been fully put in place. Fix the implementation first, the letter argued. Don’t reopen a voter mandate in closed labor talks, where hard-won provisions could be bargained away. Advocates also questioned Hermosillo’s footing on the issue, noting that the sheriff and the deputies’ labor groups backed her 2024 campaign.
The board was never unanimous on the rewrite. Supervisor Chris Coursey said he wasn’t convinced Measure P needed fixing at all, pointing to the appellate ruling. Supervisor David Rabbitt, who leaves office this year, backed a rewrite, arguing the measure was rushed onto the 2020 ballot and that cleaning it up would save money on the legal fights. Supervisor Lynda Hopkins said she would not move without buy-in from both the deputies’ unions and Measure P’s backers. Among the changes floated in the discussions: untethering IOLERO’s budget from the Sheriff’s Office — it is now guaranteed at least 1% of the law enforcement budget — and lowering the four-vote board threshold needed to remove an IOLERO director. A member of IOLERO’s Community Advisory Council called those ideas outrageous.
When the board pulled back this month, County Executive David Guhin told IOLERO staff the supervisors had concluded the law could be carried out through stronger collaboration among the watchdog, the Sheriff’s Office and county leadership, rather than a new vote. Hermosillo said she now sees a different path forward.
Stepping into the watchdog’s top job is Matthew Chavez, who joined IOLERO in 2022 as an auditor and is an attorney with more than 30 years’ experience. He took over this month from John Alden, who left to run law enforcement oversight in Marin County and who had questioned whether a ballot measure was needed at all. Michael Soto, the chief deputy who had been acting director, stays in his post. A national search for a permanent director starts now, with IOLERO’s Community Advisory Council involved.
What the truce does not settle is the fight that started all of it: whether the sheriff must order his deputies to answer IOLERO’s questions. In the watchdog’s first major independent investigation of a fatal deputy shooting, deputies refused to talk, and Engram has declined to compel them, saying the issue belongs at the bargaining table. That standoff is still live. The fight the voters thought they settled in 2020 isn’t settled yet.