Kern County supervisors pumped the brakes Tuesday on a plan to hand a newly created, higher-paying job inside the District Attorney's Office to a former sheriff's lieutenant who was fired for having sex with a subordinate on duty and later stripped of his California peace officer credentials. The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to send the proposal back to staff for a new recommendation rather than approve the position as written.
The item on the October 27 agenda called for creating a District Attorney's System Administrator classification and reclassifying one Investigative Specialist position, carrying an estimated annual General Fund impact of $48,818, according to the Kern County Board of Supervisors agenda. As KGET 17 News reports, the District Attorney's Office had requested the new Systems Administrator position specifically to transfer David Wesley Hubbard into the role, with the change set to take effect October 31.
Supervisor David Couch had offered a motion to create the position without transferring Hubbard into it, but he withdrew that motion during the meeting. Supervisor Leticia Perez said she could not support Couch's version of the plan, and the board ultimately voted unanimously to ask county staff to return with a new recommendation at a future meeting, per the same report. Several supervisors reportedly expressed discomfort with creating the position specifically for Hubbard.
A Firing, a Hiring, and a Raise
Hubbard worked for the Kern County Sheriff's Office from April 2007 to August 2022, a 16-year run that ended when then-Sheriff Donny Youngblood fired him for having sex with a subordinate in his office while on duty, a decision Youngblood described as “inexcusable,” according to the dossier's seed reporting. District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer hired him as a non-badged Investigative Specialist in 2023, after his law enforcement credentials had already been revoked.
The pay gap tells its own story. Hubbard's 2022 salary as a senior District Attorney investigator reached $128,295 annually, up from $117,908 in 2021 while he was still with the Sheriff's Office, the outlet's reporting found. The proposed Systems Administrator position would have substantially increased his base salary again and could have affected his eventual retirement calculation had he remained in the role for 12 months.
Why the DA's Office Says He's Qualified
The District Attorney's Office has defended the move by saying Hubbard was already performing tasks tied to converting the county to a new case-management system meant to replace its aging Criminal Justice Information System and support digital evidence storage and sharing, the station's report states. Kern County's Human Resources Department had recommended the Board approve the creation of the Systems Administrator role and accept its nonbudgeted General Fund fiscal impact of just under $49,000, the same account notes.
Decertification and Destroyed Evidence
Hubbard's path to the DA's office followed a state-level reckoning over his conduct. California's Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training unanimously voted to decertify him over what it characterized as “serious misconduct,” a decision that permanently bars him from serving as a peace officer in California pending the endorsement of an administrative law judge, per the same outlet's earlier coverage. He was alleged to have had sex in his office with a civilian employee who reported to him on two separate occasions in 2021 while on duty, and was further accused of improperly sharing confidential Internal Affairs information with that employee and destroying evidence relevant to the investigation into his own conduct.
What happens next remains open. The Board of Supervisors has asked staff to come back with a revised recommendation at a future meeting, but no new salary figure, timeline, or final determination on Hubbard's status within the District Attorney's Office has been made public.
