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SLO County Clerk Recorder resigns after a rocky five years

June 4, 2021

SLO County Clerk Recorder Tommy Gong

By KAREN VELIE

San Luis Obispo County Clerk Recorder Tommy Gong is resigning his elected position after securing a job in another county.

Gong’s last day has not yet been announced. The SLO County Board of Supervisors is then tasked with appointing a new clerk recorder to serve until Jan. 2023. At that time, the winner of the 2022 election will take the seat.

Then the assistant clerk recorder, Gong won his first election in Nov. 2014. During his tenure, Gong faced multiple challenges regarding his job and his family.

During the 2018 election, Gong’s office miscategorized one of the three seats that were up for grabs on the Los Osos CSD Board.

In 2019, a San Luis Obispo judge sentenced Sherry Gong, Tommy Gong’s wife, to about six months in jail for embezzling more than $32,000 from the booster club of the Atascadero High School band.

Then in the 2020 election, thousands of voters in San Luis Obispo received two vote-by-mail ballots, while other voters in rural SLO County found themselves removed from the voter rolls.

During a heated SLO County Board Of Supervisors meeting on May 4, in which supervisors debated election rules, more than 130 people called in to voice their opinions. One caller accused Gong of being a member of the Chinese Communist Party, prompting an article in the LA Times about anti-Asian sentiment and Trump supporters on the Central Coast.


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Going. Going. Gong.


3

SLO County Gong-show! Where does Guy Savage live? Solvang? WTH!


-11

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.


-6

Julie Rodewald ran the office professionally for many years.

Tommy had some big shoes to fill and unfortunately he did not.


30

So Mr.Gong is doing what most government employees do when they have surrounded themselves with on the job mistakes and misused their job positions ….they get a different government job . He will now be double or at minimum triple dipping the system when he retires .I was wondering how long it would take for him to implode .He should have been fired quite awhile ago


16

While not aware of any of his work related problems,it does sound like he wasnt really qualified for the job. Don’t mean education or similar, just not a capable administrator overseeing a city department. But I agree…government workers should get ONE retirement. I don’t care if you went from the Water Works to the Oval office with stops at Congress and the Governorship. We should definitely get rid of the double and triple dipping. But then that’s all part of the professional politician playbook.


29

Glad he is leaving; he was an incompetent boob.


Sorry he will now oversee elections in Contra Costa County.


As to the pension. He paid into the SLO County Pension Trust. This is a special retirement trust that is not governed by PERS, nor the County.


Only San Francisco City and County and SLO County have stand alone retirement systems and SLO County employees didn’t start their pension trust until the 1960’s. Before that county employees had no pensions.


He will start contributing to the Contra Costa system, which is either a 1937 Act county or a contracted PERS system. When he retires he will get two checks based on his years of service in each system multiplied by 2%.


Financially he would have been better off staying in office and contributing to one system, but don’t tell him that.


-7

The “more than 130 people called in to voice their opinions” were very obviously election conspiracy operatives and fraudsters who were not from anywhere near here. They were so dumb that most of them didn’t even know how to say the name “San Luis Obispo” correctly.


4

The Gong Show is over.


33

The Best Comment on this Thread!!!!

Well Done!


-4

Ohhhh wow, too hot in the kitchen, Tommy? Timing is interesting. Although heard he is going to San Fran – his home here is probably worth a heck of a lot and maybe he can get in one of the “Fire Sales” in Frisco since there’s an exodus to get OUT of the S#iThole! Literally, streets paved with pooh, lol.


-2

Best of everything to the Gong family.


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