For 30 years, Melinda Greene has been one of the key cogs in the machine of county government, holding down the fort most noticeably in the Hall of Records, where members of the public go to get their marriage certificates, death certificates, and real estate records registered — ministerial markers for major life events. This Tuesday, Greene — a certified public accountant, elections officer, and fiscal officer for the elections, assessor’s, and recorder’s offices — announced she’s running for county clerk, recorder, and assessor, one of the more poorly understood but critical elected positions in county government.
Greene said she’s running out of a sense of duty and a conviction she can get the job done. “I fell in love with this work,” she said almost sheepishly. “It’s drudgery. But I love it. I’m a nerd, I know. I don’t care if people think that.”
As the chief executive in charge of courthouse weddings, Greene trained her staff to be on the lookout for signs of coercion among the soon-to-be-betrothed. Similarly, Greene has trained staff recording real estate transactions to be vigilant for possible elder abuse. She was the first to alert authorities to such fraud involving an elderly Montecito woman who was subsequently murdered.
Born of mixed-race parents — her mother was Japanese, her father an Anglo from Santa Barbara — Greene has launched a slow-moving community partnership to redact now-illegal racially based restrictive covenants from the county’s voluminous real estate records.
“I don’t need caffeine,” Greene says with a laugh, describing her impulse to conjure plans in anticipation of problems yet to have surfaced. The job, she said, is too important, the skills required too technical to trust the post to someone whose chops are strictly political.
It’s not clear whether Greene will have to run against her boss — Joe Holland, the incumbent county clerk, recorder, and assessor since 2003. Holland has been hobbled by chronic back and leg pain so severe that he’s worked from his home the past several years. His absence from the workplace has become the subject of political comment.
“If I can walk,” Holland vowed, “I will be filing papers. I brought this county through a lot in the last 24 years — a lot of changes and a lot of challenges — and I still feel I’m the best person for the job.”
The election is scheduled for June 2.
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