- Welcome to "Inland Edition," where we have conversations with people who make decisions that affect our everyday lives.

My name is Joe Richardson.

I'm an Inland Empire resident, an attorney, and your host.

And today, we're going to chat with Riverside's Treasurer-Tax Collector, a proud third-generation Inland Empire resident, a father of three and a husband of 28 years, Matthew Jennings is responsible [background music] for the billing and collection of over $4 billion annually in property taxes, and as the county treasurer, manages or oversees another $30 billion in the pooled investment fund, and all school district annual receipts and disbursements.

He's worked in the office of the treasurer-tax collector since 1994 and played a vital role in the development and implementation of the new shared property tax system.

He's thoughtful, loyal and resourceful, and it's time to meet him now.

[gentle upbeat music] ♪ ♪ ♪ I am happy to have Riverside County Treasurer-Tax Collector, Matthew Jennings with us.

Welcome to "Inland Edition."

- Thank you, Joe.

Appreciate it.

- [Joe] I'm glad that you're here.

Let's start off by building the house.

We have so much in common already!

About the same age, folks from the same place.

This is gonna be real cool.

So, after a while, y'all can just turn the camera off.

We can keep going!

No.

(Matthew laughs) No, but let's build the house a little bit.

Tell us about, for you, whether there was one particular aha moment on your path to public service, or was it a series of moments?

- [Matthew] Mostly, it's been a series of moments.

But if I had to point to just one single aha moment, I think I would say it was when I was a supervisor; current department, treasurer-tax collector.

I had been a supervisor for a couple of years, and I thought, "you know what?

I might wanna do somethin' different.

"I don't know if this is my chosen career path or if it's not."

I'm a man of faith.

I've been an associate pastor for over a decade.

And so, at that point, I had a conversation with God and I said, "Hey, is this where I'm supposed to be?

Is this where you need me?"

And I said, "If it is, then you have to give me a promotion!"

(laughs) And so, about two weeks later, I got promoted, and I took that as a sign; this is where I'm supposed to be.

And, at that point, it became my goal to be the treasurer-tax collector.

- I like talkin' about that because you have been-- worked at Riverside County your entire career, earned two degrees while you've worked there.

And so, you're going along the path.

Was that the moment that your goal was to be the-?

At the top in leadership?

You were already a supervisor, but at the top in leadership?

Did you know that when you first walked in?

- You know, I didn't know when I first walked in.

But what I did know is when I first walked in, I liked the work.

I actually enjoyed the work.

And so, when I tell people that, a lot of times they're like, "Oh, man!

How can you like collecting taxes?

You're crazy!"

(both laughing) And I tell them, like, "I don't know.

Maybe I am crazy, but maybe not!"

However, I think that what it is, it's because I'm supposed to be there.

I mean, my name is Matthew and I'm a tax collector.

- Right.

Look at that!

- And so, I think that's why I enjoyed the work.

And so, when I enjoyed the work, I thought, "you know what?

I can make a career out of this."

I didn't think about being at the top at that point.

But, when I had that aha moment when I was a supervisor, I thought about it and it became a goal, not only because I felt that God was pointing me in that direction, but also because I thought that I could do it.

This is something that is within reach, and if I work hard, if I dedicate myself, it's something that I can accomplish.

And so, that's when I think it became my goal to be the treasurer-tax collector.

And, a lot of point was made when I first was appointed about my color, because I'm the first Black treasurer-tax collector.

And, I didn't wanna be the first Black treasurer-tax collector.

I did wanna be a Black treasurer-tax collector, though.

- Right.

- And, I wanted to do that because I wanted to show all of the other minority youth that there is something else that you can do and be successful at besides sports and music, right?

A lot of times that's kinda how we get pigeonholed.

And so, there's not a lot of people that like math, are good at numbers and things.

There's not a lot of people that know that those opportunities are out there, that they exist.

And so, that became one of my biggest, biggest goals and accomplishments there.

- So, tell us.

A lot of us know the letter that we get once a year, twice a year from the treasurer-tax collector.

And, you know?

That's not so fair that we make our judgments based on that.

We associate hearing from the tax collector with bad news.

So, tell us about what the treasurer-tax collector actually does.

Give us a "101" on it.

- We pretty much run a threefold shop.

Obviously, working for local government.

First and foremost, we're public servants, and a big mandate of ours is to service the public, right?

And, it's sometimes difficult because we have that stigma attached to a tax collector and "all we want is your money."

But, we're doing a lot to try and change that.

But, being a good public servant that actually cares about the community, that actually cares about the work and what that money is going toward, that's something that's invaluable.

So, on the treasurer side of the shop, a lot of people don't know this, but we actually act as the bank for the county.

We handle the banking relationship for the county and all the departments, as well as all of the school districts and special districts within the county, as well.

We also operate what we call a treasurer's pooled investment fund, and short: TPIF.

And, we invest all of the county's money, all of the school district's money, all of the special districts and so forth.

We invest all those funds.

And, right now that's about a $13 billion to $14 billion investment portfolio currently.

- My gosh.

- So, that's on the treasurer side.

Then on the tax collector side, obviously, we collect all of the property taxes for the county.

And, what many may not realize is it's not just homes because the bulk of property taxes, it's called "secured", which is your regular residential home, your commercial property, industrial: raw land.

That's all secure property taxes.

There's also "unsecured" property taxes.

Unsecured property taxes include boats, aircraft, businesses.

And, a lot of people say you have to pay property taxes on a business.

And, that's one that we really wanna get out there.

Because, if you own and operate a business in the state of California, you should be paying annual unsecured property taxes.

And, what you're paying for is the business equipment.

It's all of the furniture, fixtures, lighting, everything within the business that it takes to operate the business.

So, it's not the raw land or the building, but it's actually everything within the business that it takes to run the business.

And you pay taxes on that, as well.

Right now in Riverside County, that annual tax bill is roughly just under $5 billion on an annual basis that we collect.

- So, tell us about your interaction, how you interact with the county board of supervisors and county government.

You've talked about that a little bit.

Talk about that a little bit more because, of course, I'm sure that they've got you on speed dial!

(Matthew chuckles) Because what you do is so vital.

- Yes, they do!

(Joe chuckles) And, I have them on speed dial!

(both laughing) I think it's a mutual beneficial relationship.

So, all five board of supervisors in Riverside County, they're all elected officials, as am I; as is all of the property tax departments.

So, the way property taxes actually work is you have an independently elected assessor who actually values the property.

They take care of all of the title information, situs information, which is the address of the property.

They handle all the values, the exemptions and everything, and they build what we call a property tax roll.

They then pass that on to another independently elected representative, the auditor-controller.

The auditor-controller actually calculates the taxes, and then he adds any special assessments and fixed charges from various bonding agencies or CFDs.

We call them Mello-Roos.

A lot of people know about those.

And then, they pass-- the auditor-controller then passes me, the treasurer-tax collector, independently elected official, the complete product.

And, what we do is we simply really bill and collect.

Now, I do have about three volumes of property tax law that I have to abide by.

So, it's not quite that simple.

But, that's the biggest thing is we bill and collect.

So, the money train has to be independently elected, right?

And, that's for a reason.

They want separation from the policymakers versus how the money is flowing, for transparency, accountability, et cetera.

And so, anytime that I have a budget for my department-- It's roughly $25 million budget.

Anytime that I wanna spend a certain amount of money above a certain threshold, I gotta go to the board of supervisors to ask for approval to do that.

Our investment policy.

Actually, the investments that we do, and we do all our investments in-house, but all of our investments actually has to be approved by an oversight committee.

We have an investment oversight committee.

And then, after they approve it, it has to go to the board of supervisors for approval.

My investment authority actually gets derived from the board of supervisors delegating their investment authority to me.

Technically, they're the ones with the authority to invest.

- I'm interested in the fact that you have such a perspective because you've been there for so long.

There has to be some before-and-after in terms of-- Talk to me about how the office has evolved in the way that you do business, the way that technology has figured in to what you guys do.

Give me some sense of the before-and-after and how far the office has come.

- Yeah.

So, Joe?

Do you remember the 1970's DMV look?

- I do.

- [Matthew] With the brown and orange and everything?

- Yes, sir.

I do.

- When I first started, that's how the office looked!

(both laughing) So, imagine the change since then!

- Right!

- And, it's not just been a change of aesthetics and what the department looks like.

It's been a change in really what the department looks like as far as diversity is concerned.

- That's right.

- When I first started, I was one of two males in the entire department.

At that time, there were approximately 60 employees.

Now, we have roughly 110 employees.

There were, like I said, two males.

Now, we have roughly 25 or so males.

There were two-?

Or, actually, three people of color.

Now, we're fully diverse.

- Wow.

- Probably more than half are people of color.

- Amazing.

- [Matthew] And so, that has changed a lot.

Back then, we were billing roughly about just under $1 billion in property taxes.

As I've told you, it's grown to roughly $5 billion.

Our investment portfolio was at about $3 billion, and now it's at close to $14 billion.

So, the responsibility level has increased dramatically.

In addition to that, and as far as technology goes, we were one of the actually-- we were the first county in California to offer tax sales online.

- Hm!

- So, we brought that to California and we've been pioneering those kinds of things in Riverside County for a long time.

And, that was one of the things that I wanted to make sure that we continue to be a pioneer in various avenues, but especially technology because that's where the world has gone and where the world is going, right?

- So, tell me about some of the unique challenges surrounding COVID.

We were talking about this, off.

And, of course, I always ask a COVID question for people that were in leadership at that time, because it really pointed the way to some things or some lessons learned, and I always hear something different every time.

But, not only were you in the office at the time COVID happens, that's around the time you take it over and become the guy!

So, tell us about that.

Take us through the window of that and the challenges that COVID presented and the things that you took from it, lessons learned.

- [Matthew] I actually was appointed in June of 2020.

It didn't take effect until September of 2020 when my predecessor actually retired.

And so, we were right in the thick of COVID at the time.

And, the initial challenge for a department like mine, who has to process payments, is we can't have everyone work from home, right?

So, at a certain point, you would see just people leaving the county building in droves with their equipment.

Because obviously, we're shut down, and we're trying to social distance.

Nobody's coming into the office, et cetera.

That was a very difficult situation for us to manage because we're processing thousands of payments a day and we can't take money home to process it at home.

So, it has to be there at the location.

We have a vault.

We have to secure our cash and everything.

And so, it was a challenge just trying to get certain people to work from home.

And so, we went through this process to say, "okay, who actually can and is able to work from home?

"And, who cannot so that we can make sure "whoever is in the office can be properly social distanced "and we can make sure all of the cleaning is being done, et cetera, and keep folks separated?"

And so, that turned out to be a much bigger challenge than we anticipated because we're doing that at the same time that the whole world is doing that.

Right?

So, "oh, we need laptops."

"Hmm.

Yeah.

There are none!"

(laughs) On top of that, we're having to do a lot of press releases and things like that because one of the big major questions at that time was, "do I still have to pay property taxes?"

The state?

You don't have to pay state income taxes.

The feds?

They cut off the taxes.

You don't have to pay federal income taxes by this time.

"Well?

If you don't have to pay federal income taxes, "you don't have to pay state income taxes, then why do I have to pay property taxes?"

(laughs) - Right!

- [Matthew] And so, not only was the answer, "yes, you still have to pay property taxes," but we had to deal with the backlash that other taxes are being postponed, but property taxes are not.

And, that was truly a challenge that we had to deal with!

- [Joe] Wow, that's amazing.

Tell me about-- you've got enough history, having been there for a long time, the things that you're the proudest of that the office has accomplished and some of the biggest challenges that you've seen.

- The biggest accomplishment I say is just being a leader in the state, as far as property tax expertise.

Because a lot of times, since we were the first to go online, we were pioneers in unsecured collections.

I think that just being that leader is what I'm most proud of.

Because my team gets tasked to do a lot of, I would say not just speaking engagements, presentations, but they get tapped to be in a lot of peer groups to try and resolve some of the issues that we see in property tax collection, and in investment and collections.

And so, that for me is a very proud moment when I see my staff being requested by other counties throughout the state to help tackle problems that all 58 counties are trying to deal with.

I would say that's probably my biggest, biggest proud moment for them.

- If there is some such a thing, (Matthew laughs) tell us what is-?

What's a typical day like for you?

- Yeah.

I don't know that there is such a thing!

- That's why I prefaced it the way I did!

(laughs) I figured there might not be.

- Well?

Today is not a typical day!

(laughs) - [Joe] Right, right, right!

Sure.

- Yeah.

You know?

It's funny because it's very different.

I mean, one day, I'll go into the office and I spend my whole entire day in meetings.

But then, I'm also on eight or nine different committees.

- Mm hm.

- And so, I'll have a committee meeting, one, two or three of those.

And then, we'll have a meeting with the CEO or someone like that.

And then, I'll have another meeting, say, with a taxpayer that has an issue that has risen to my level.

So, some days I go in, and it's back-to-back meetings.

Some days I'll go in and there are no meetings, and it's "catch up on email time".

Or, it's reviewing something that I need to approve.

We have a lot of projects that we manage.

For example, some of our systems, they get to end-of-life, and we're forced to do an upgrade.

When we have to do that upgrade, it's almost like building out a whole new system.

So, there's a lot of programming that needs to be done, but there's also a lot before you even get there: contract negotiations, RFPs, which is requests for proposals; things that we have to do.

And, I usually have to sign off on a lot of that.

And so, I have to review everything.

Our investments?

We're making on $14 billion portfolio, we're making about a million and a half dollars a day.

- Hmm.

- And, all of those investments, we have an investment policy that they have to adhere to.

But, if they're wanting-- if my team is wanting to go to a different broker or have a different investment mechanism, then we have to discuss that.

It has to come to me, and then we'll see where we're at.

We'll take a look at the market conditions.

We'll maybe bring in an economist.

We'll take a look at some of our investment brokers like BlackRock, have them weigh in, and then we'll make a decision.

And so, a lot of my time is spent doing things like that, as well.

(Matthew chuckles) - So, give us your wish list about what you would like to see the county accomplish, in general.

Give us 10, 15 years looking down the road, and your office in particular, your office's role in helping the county.

What is around the corner and around the bend in terms of you being able to look at it and say, "I think we accomplished what we wanted to accomplish?"

- [Matthew] Yeah.

You know?

I think it's going to be, to be in the strongest financial position that we could possibly be in.

I'm a finance guy, and that's my area of expertise and that's my wheelhouse, and that's what I've been tasked to do.

And so, my goals for my department, as well as the county, it's gonna center around that.

A lot of people may not realize or understand the impact that these taxes have because you know, we can talk about county and county services.

We provide the general fund pretty much all of their money, maybe 80% of the general fund money, about a billion dollars in property taxes.

And, it's their discretionary revenue.

And so, when you look at the property tax revenue that's coming in, it supports all kinds of county services: fire, police, hospital, social services.

All these things are being funded by the property tax revenue that we're bringing in.

And, we want that to remain strong.

A lot of it has to do with assessed values.

And, those have a good deal to do with market values, which we don't really have a lot of control over the real estate market, right?

But, what we do have control over is to make sure that if market values start declining, we're still being efficient in our duties.

And, we're putting the money to work and we're actively out there trying to collect it because it's very important that it still come in.

A lot of times during a downturn, an economic downturn, you may see the real estate market head down, and it's gonna affect property tax as a whole, right?

The revenue.

So, we go from, say, $5 billion down to $4.5 billion.

That's $500 million that we're missing.

However, as I stated earlier, if we're making about a million and a half dollars a day on those deposits, every day that we don't get that money on deposit, in essence, we're losing some portion of that million and a half dollars a day.

So, for us to make sure that our operations are running at peak performance, that we're getting the most bang for our buck, and with the resources that we have, we're striving to be the most efficient as we possibly can be.

That's what I'm looking forward to, and that's what we're working as a county to try and accomplish.

- [Joe] Give us ways people can-- Give us some homework.

Ways people can get in contact with your office, follow up with you.

And, maybe even- and let me add this- somebody that's young, early in career, contemplating careers, and they've got this thing where they like numbers!

(Matthew chuckles) How does someone connect the dots with the treasurer-tax collector?

- Well, a lot of our information is gonna be online, and our website is www.countytreasurer.org You can actually go on there, and we have several pieces of information.

It's a resource that we can utilize in order for people to find out information about what we do.

It has my bio on there.

It has our management team, and what they do on there.

It's a lot of information.

It has our contact information, as far as email, phone numbers.

We have a phone line that we staff with quite a few folks because we get thousands of calls a day.

You can go to our human resources website, Riverside County Human Resources, and they have a lot of information about our department and the positions within the county that people can apply for.

So, there's tons of resources.

And a lot of times, especially with this generation, it's at your fingertips.

And, you can just go online and take a look at some of them.

- [Joe] Matthew Jennings, Riverside County Treasurer-Tax Collector, I thank you so much for being with us.

- You're very welcome!

I thank you for having me.

I appreciate it.

- So, I wanna thank each and every one of you for watching us.

Know that you can go to our YouTube page.

You can stream KVCR, the app, and probably get some outtakes, one or two of which may have come from this episode itself!

But, in any event, thank you for joining us and continue to join us as we walk along the road to building bridges one conversation at a time.

Until then, take care.

Thanks.

[uplifting music and vocals] ♪ ♪ [softer music] ♪ ♪ ♪ [music fades]