Indicted Derry Tells Tea Party: 'I've Made A Lot Of People Angry'

Neil Derry knew he was taking on powerful people when he decided to run for San Bernardino County's Third District Supervisor seat.

That, he told more than 100 members of the Redlands Tea Party Patriots on Wednesday, is behind the felony charges filed against him in recent weeks by the state Attorney General's office.

“Needless to say, I made a lot of people angry and you’re seeing that today,” Derry said. 

Derry was there to talk about the county budget, taxes and services.

But first, he wanted to address the white elephant in the room.

“I know you’ve all read the newspapers over the last couple of weeks,” Derry told the crowd.

“When I came onboard the county board of supervisors, I took on Supervisor (Dennis) Hansberger who had been in office off and on for 20 years as a county supervisor,” Derry said. “I took on the old guard. I took on a lot of folks that had been in power for a long time. And that was a very difficult campaign. But we did win because we had the right message. We were talking about the abuse of power of government. We were talking about the abuse of county credit cards.”

Derry and former state assemblyman Chuck DeVore were featured guests at the tea party’s general meeting held at Mill Creek Cattle Company in Mentone. Derry had been scheduled to participate in the event a month ago.

On April 26, Derry was served with a complaint accusing him of felony perjury and filing campaign documents that failed to report a $5,000 contribution from Arnold Stubblefield-Highland Town Shops. Officials said he also failed to report Stubblefield as a contributor, which is a misdemeanor.

Despite his troubles, the crowd greeted Derry with applause and nods as he discussed the county woes.

Budget-wise, the county has a $125 million shortfall over the next five years out of a $4 billion budget, he said.

“About $350 million are general fund dollars we control,” Derry said. “The mass majority are funds for public safety.”

The county is on a limited budget, he said. About 85 percent of the costs are related to employees and compensation for employees that number almost 19,000 employees, he said.

They are working with the different employee organizations, such as the firefighters union, to try and close that deficit, he said.

“We are going to deal with that over the next few months,” he said. “And it will be difficult. There most likely will be service reductions at the county level as you’ve seen with city governments throughout the state of California.”

“We will have smaller governance. We will learn to be more efficient. We’ll do a much better job with the taxpayer dollars you give us. But we won’t raise your taxes because: One, we can’t without the public voting on it and there are enough votes on the board (of supervisors) to put it on the ballot and two, you wouldn’t support it anyways. That’s just a fact of life.”