Mailers criticize Furch's tax lapse

Two mailers hammering on Sonoma County supervisorial candidate Rue Furch's tardy property tax payments have landed in west county mailboxes in the campaign's waning days.

Furch characterized the mailers as "full of half-truths and negative campaigning that indicates who the true supporters of my opponent are."

The mailers -- funded largely by a Marin County developer and a Napa gravel company -- do not mention her opponent, Efren Carrillo, by name.

They take Furch to task for neglecting property tax payments for five of seven years from 2000 to 2007, omissions that resulted in $71,000 worth of taxes and penalties piling up.

The bill was paid last December, some six months after she filed for the 5th District seat being vacated by Mike Reilly. Furch, a county planning commissioner for 17 years, has been endorsed by most of the county's environmental groups.

The mailers' combined $44,000 costs were funded by an independent expenditure committee called Citizens for Transportation Funding. Major funders were Berg Holdings, a company owned by Marin County developer Skip Berg, $20,000; Pro Transport of Cotati, an ambulance transport company, $10,000; and Syar Industries gravel mining company, $8,000.

Berg owns Port Sonoma, a Petaluma River marina proposed as a ferry, barge and bus terminal on the old Northwest Pacific rail line. He is also a director of NWP Inc., a privately held firm with the contract to develop freight service on railroad property slicing through Napa, Sonoma, Marin, Mendocino and Humboldt counties.

NWP plans to make money by hauling Sonoma County's garbage to landfills outside the county.

Environmentalists oppose the proposed ferry terminal as a threat to the bay lands, while Berg envisions Port Sonoma as playing a pivotal role in freight transportation via rail lines.

Furch said the motivation of Berg Holdings to fund the attack-style mailer was clearly to influence future board decisions on those projects.

"I take this astonishing amount of money to mean that he thinks he will receive some better favor from my opponent than he would get from me," Furch said.

Many political insiders had anticipated Furch's tax problems would re-emerge as a hot campaign issue at the last minute. Furch's defenders say it's a dead issue because taxes were paid; her critics say it's hypocrisy to avoid taxes funding public services that come under oversight of the elected board.

Although Furch's tax problems were mentioned early in debates among eight candidates running for the seat in the June election, the issue has been dormant in recent months.

Now, however, both mailers question Furch's judgment.

"If you want to be an elected official, wouldn't you say obeying the law and paying your taxes is a minimum requirement?" one mailer asks.

Furch defended her actions, saying "the taxes have been paid."

She has owned the home outside of Sebastopol since 1999 along with her partner, environmental consultant Scot Stegemen. Furch has cited "a cash flow crisis" in both of their consultant businesses as the reason why the couple fell behind in making tax payments.

She said they had been in a contract with the county to pay off back taxes well before public notice of default was issued in June 2007. She said a series of missteps in making timely full payment resulted in the issue dragging into the election campaign.

Through an independent broker, Furch and Stegemen obtained a loan for $120,000, a loan that became controversial because the lender was a developer, Dennis Hunter.

Last June, the couple obtained a replacement loan for $131,500 from another brokerage, Sequoia Pacific Mortgage, with the money being loaned by the company's profit-sharing plan.

The difference between the amount of property taxes owed and the hefty loans was caused by consolidation of other personal debts, she said.

The two new mailers echo questions raised in a mailer sent out last week by Carrillo's campaign. The mailer referred voters to a Web site called FurchFacts.com and provided an abbreviated version of the same documents and transactions referenced in mailers from the Citizens for Transportation Funding.

You can reach Staff Writer Bleys W. Rose at 521-5431 or bleys.rose@pressdemocrat.com.