How to resolve whether Turlock councilwoman is lying about where she lives

The California Attorney General’s office should investigate claims that Turlock City Councilwoman Rebecka Monez does not live in the district she represents.

A clear determination of Monez’s residency should be welcomed by all:

• If she lives in southwest Turlock’s District 2 as she says, Monez will be vindicated and a cloud removed from over her head.
• If she lives on the other side of town in a home she purchased with her husband in December 2020, just after she was elected, her critics will be justified. Prosecutors with the attorney general’s office could then proceed with subsequent steps.
  
  

Questions of residency matter because laws say they do — for holders of office from the state level on down, including city government.

It’s a bit confusing that members of Congress need not live in the districts they represent. Many maintain homes near the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., because they spend so much time there, as well as back home, but they’re not required to.

It came up in 2020 for Ted Howze, a candidate for Congressional District 10, because he claimed he lived in Turlock, while his critics said he didn’t. It became a question of honesty.

Most other offices, however, require that office holders — from the California Legislature to school boards to irrigation districts and more — live among the people they serve.

A grand jury in 2009 found that then-Riverbank Councilman Jesse James White did not live there when he filed to run, but the rest of the council decided they didn’t have authority to remove him.

The late Tom Berryhill lived in Del Rio north of Modesto at least some of the time that he represented a state Senate district outside of Stanislaus County from 2010 to 2018. Elections enforcers were satisfied when Berryhill said he had lived in Tuolumne County at the time he ran for office.

More recently, former Stanislaus County Supervisor Kristin Olsen acknowledged having moved out of the district she represented and into another — from Riverbank to Modesto, to be precise. She got around the law by simply saying she intended to move back, a claim that many found hard to swallow. And she never returned to Riverbank.

Monez’s critics question whether she has ever lived in the district she represents since her election a year ago in Turlock, the county’s second-largest city behind Modesto.

Restoring confidence in Turlock

Voters deserve to know whether the person they elected lives among them. Turlock’s method for inspecting a formal complaint lodged a year ago — collecting a notarized affidavit and a rental agreement — is too flimsy to settle the dispute.

It would help if Monez were forthcoming. She answered some residency questions in October 2020 and by email a few weeks ago, but failed to reply to various inquiries when Bee reporter Kristin Lam followed up recently, after some neighbors said Monez doesn’t live where she says she does. And Monez did not respond to a call from The Bee editorial board this week.

It’s troubling when candidates readily talk when they’re running, then go radio silent when confronted with hard questions.

The best way to find real answers, in this case, is for Monez to be confronted by someone she can’t ignore.

The California Attorney General’s office can settle this. Holding leaders to account is required for building — and restoring — confidence in government.

This story was originally published November 2, 2021 at 11:50 AM.