Dan McAllister, San Diego County's Treasurer-Tax Collector for 23 Years, Dies at 74

Dan McAllister, San Diego County’s treasurer-tax collector for a generation, dead at 74 – San Diego Union-Tribune

Dan McAllister Dies at 74: San Diego County's Longtime Treasurer Left Legacy Shadowed by Scandal

Sexual harassment settlements and financial audit failures marred 23-year tenure managing billions in public funds

December 18, 2024

Dan McAllister, who managed billions of dollars in San Diego County property taxes and investments during a 23-year career as treasurer-tax collector, died Wednesday morning following a prolonged illness. He was 74.

McAllister's death, coming just four months after an abrupt mid-term retirement, closes a chapter on one of the county's most contradictory public service careers—one marked by grassroots community advocacy and professional achievement on one hand, and serious workplace misconduct and financial mismanagement on the other.

His August retirement came just days before The San Diego Union-Tribune revealed he had been the subject of two sexual harassment lawsuits that cost taxpayers more than $100,000 in settlements. The revelations, combined with a 2010 forensic audit that found his office had improperly withheld $8 million from taxpayers and compromised data integrity, paint a complex picture of a popular elected official whose personal conduct and management practices fell far short of his public image.

From Peace Corps to Power

A second-generation San Diego native who grew up in Pacific Beach and graduated from Mission Bay High School, McAllister built an unconventional path to public office. After earning degrees from Fresno State and what is now Alliant International University, he served in the Peace Corps in Micronesia, worked briefly at KFMB radio, and became a stockbroker at A.G. Edwards in La Jolla.

In 2002, he ran for treasurer-tax collector as a Republican in a nonpartisan race, defeating incumbent Bart Hartman—who himself faced sexual harassment allegations. McAllister won re-election five times, cruising to his final victory in 2022 with 74% of the vote, before resigning in August 2024 with 17 months remaining in his sixth term.

As treasurer-tax collector, McAllister oversaw collection of billions in annual property taxes and managed the county's $18 billion investment pool. Under his leadership, the office maintained a 99% collection rate and earned triple-A credit ratings. He modernized operations by implementing electronic payment systems and established convenient drop boxes throughout the region.

Community Champion

McAllister's most lasting positive impact may have been his advocacy for underserved communities. When the Jackie Robinson Family YMCA competed for funding to finance its $40 million renovation 15 years ago, his letter to California State Parks officials proved instrumental in securing $5 million in state funding.

"From a socio-economic standpoint, the neighborhoods served by the Jackie Robinson Family YMCA stand out not for their affluence or low unemployment rates," he wrote with unusual directness for an elected official. "On the contrary…" He went on to detail the challenges facing southeastern San Diego and why public investment was crucial.

"Back in 2004, to have his voice out there advocating for new funding was huge and important," said Anna Arancibia, the YMCA's current chief executive. The renovated facility opened in 2017.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber credited McAllister with emphasizing diversity and recruiting young people of color to his office. "He never bragged about it," Weber said. "Everywhere there was an event or fundraising, Dan was there."

Among those he mentored was Ebony Shelton, now the county's chief administrative officer, whom McAllister hired as an inexperienced 20-something for a budget manager position. "That opportunity would spark my lifelong passion for municipal finance," she recalled. "He gave generously of his time, energy and attention."

McAllister volunteered annually to play Santa Claus at Jackie Robinson YMCA holiday events and was a fixture at weekly Catfish Club community luncheons. He served on numerous boards including the San Diego County Employees Retirement Association, CalTRUST, the San Diego Convention Center Corporation, and the Jackie Robinson YMCA.

Former Union-Tribune columnist Diane Bell remembered him as one of those rare politicians who continued campaigning after winning. "The day after Election Day, he stood for hours on a downtown street corner with a sign that in huge letters thanked San Diegans for their vote," Bell said.

Financial Mismanagement Exposed

The positive public narrative obscured serious management failures that emerged in a devastating 2010 forensic audit. New York auditing firm Kessler International found that McAllister's office had improperly withheld almost $8 million in property tax overpayments owed to taxpayers—money that should have been returned within four years under state law.

The 45-page audit, completed in March 2009 but withheld from public release until February 2010 following a California Public Records Act request, revealed far more troubling problems:

Data Integrity Compromised: "Kessler uncovered many discrepancies, irregularities and user errors during the audit, including the deletion of data, which is an indication that fraud may have occurred," the report stated. "Based on the above, Kessler concludes that data integrity was compromised and the potential for fraud exists."

Attempted Fraud: In December 2006, an unidentified assistant manager forged her name on a document attempting to claim money belonging to the county. The illegal payment was prevented—but only after seven months.

Obstruction of Auditors: Kessler analysts reported that Northrop Grumman, the office's IT contractor, instructed an employee not to cooperate with the audit. "Shortly after our conversation with this individual, he was terminated by Northrop Grumman," the report stated.

Computer Security Failures: Even as of March 2009, employees could delete records without approval or oversight.

The Kessler audit was not the first to identify problems. At least two other independent reviews dating to 2005 and an internal county audit from January 2008 had identified similar deficiencies—raising serious questions about McAllister's responsiveness to oversight.

The county paid $73,000 for the Kessler audit but did not release it until forced to do so. "There is a good-government obligation to disclose the results of an audit the taxpayers paid for," said Robert Fellmeth of the Center for Public Interest Law at the University of San Diego. "Nobody discussed it at a (public) meeting?"

Despite these revelations, McAllister won re-election in 2010 and served three more terms with minimal opposition.

Pattern of Sexual Harassment

Far more damaging were two sexual harassment lawsuits filed by female subordinates—allegations that remained largely hidden from public view until after McAllister's retirement.

The Torres Case (2006-2007)

Suzanne Torres, whom McAllister recruited from Morgan Stanley in Beverly Hills to serve as deputy treasurer-tax collector in 2005, alleged that her job consisted primarily of accompanying McAllister to public appearances as his "confidant and companion" rather than performing substantive financial work.

According to her January 2007 lawsuit, McAllister developed "an unusual personal interest" in Torres, phoning her late at night to discuss his marriage and sex life, making crude remarks about other women's appearances, and intruding into her personal life in attempts to form a romantic relationship.

After Torres complained in March 2006, she alleged McAllister ostracized her, ultimately forcing her resignation in September 2006. The county initially rejected her harassment claim, finding no evidence to support it. However, Torres and McAllister reached a private settlement in December 2007. The county was not involved and paid no money to Torres, according to county officials.

The Heredia Case (2019-2022)

The second case—which remained unreported until shortly before McAllister's retirement—proved even more troubling in its details and in the institutional response it revealed.

Nataly Heredia, a specialist in the tax collector's financial division, filed a lawsuit in 2021 alleging that in late 2019, McAllister made incessant, unwanted visits to her cubicle, at times looking her up and down, trying to walk her to her car, and remarking on how lonely he was. On one occasion, he allegedly told her "he had never seen someone with such a welcoming smile."

McAllister's behavior became something of an inside joke among colleagues, with coworkers texting Heredia warnings when they spotted him approaching. Others remarked that McAllister had rarely visited their office before Heredia worked there.

Most troublingly, when Heredia sought help, an assistant manager allegedly discouraged her from reporting McAllister to human resources and encouraged her to quit her job, even after she confided that the visits were causing extreme anxiety and panic attacks. The manager allegedly advised her to wear turtlenecks and claim she had a boyfriend to fend off McAllister's attention—advice the manager later denied giving in a deposition.

After Heredia filed a state employment-discrimination claim in January 2020, the county opened an investigation that ultimately cleared McAllister of wrongdoing. With her anxiety worsening and the county refusing to transfer her to the Chula Vista office, Heredia took a sick day on January 23, 2020, and never returned.

"Getting help from you has been as terrible as the harassment itself," she wrote to county HR before quitting.

In July 2022—just months before McAllister won re-election with 74% of the vote—the county settled with Heredia for $105,000. The case remained unreported throughout the 2022 campaign, leaving voters unaware of the allegations.

"I'm grateful Dan McAllister is retiring," Heredia said when his retirement was announced in August 2024. "I can only hope that no one else will ever have to experience what I went through under his leadership."

Sudden Retirement Under a Cloud

On July 25, 2024, McAllister announced he would retire effective August 2—just one week's notice after 23 years in office and 17 months before his term ended. Campaign finance records showed he had recently paid for professional services for his 2026 re-election campaign.

The timing raised immediate questions. Just nine days after his departure, The San Diego Union-Tribune published its investigation revealing the previously unreported Heredia settlement. Reporter Lucas Robinson later explained that he had been researching the story when McAllister's retirement was announced.

The sequence of events suggested McAllister may have learned the long-buried allegations were about to surface.

County supervisors who had been briefed about the Heredia case in closed session when they approved the $105,000 settlement in 2022—Jim Desmond and Terra Lawson-Remer—declined to comment when the allegations became public. Supervisor Joel Anderson, who praised McAllister's service, similarly declined to address the harassment claims.

This institutional silence meant that voters re-elected McAllister in 2022 with 74% of the vote without knowing the county had just paid $105,000 to settle harassment allegations against him.

A Divided Legacy

Current Treasurer-Tax Collector Larry Cohen, appointed after McAllister's retirement, called his death "a sad day" and said McAllister "represented the best of public service."

Yet this official narrative stands in stark contrast to the documented pattern of behavior toward female subordinates, the financial mismanagement revealed by multiple audits, and the institutional failures that allowed both to continue for years.

Former Supervisor Dianne Jacob praised McAllister's "steady hand and discipline in managing the funds he had authority over" but declined to comment on the harassment claims. Representative Scott Peters described him as "a rare breed of elected official who strived to do the right thing," though he was unaware of the harassment allegations during McAllister's tenure.

District Attorney Summer Stephan said she remembered "getting very loud cheers alongside him" at community parades. "He somehow made people feel like the tax man was on the side of the people."

But that populist appeal masked serious problems. The two harassment settlements, the suppressed forensic audit, and the pattern of inadequate oversight enforcement reveal an elected official who operated with minimal accountability despite managing billions in public funds.

Personal Life and Survivors

Dan and Catherine McAllister raised two children in Solana Beach before separating approximately 15 years ago. His son Patrick remembered being taken to the Jackie Robinson Y every summer as a boy for sports clinics and activities.

"It opened my eyes to the talent and diversity that not everyone from North County gets," Patrick McAllister said. "He was a man of the people, so he was always talking to someone about something. He wanted to help other people."

McAllister is survived by his former wife Catherine, who remains in San Diego; his son Patrick McAllister of San Diego; his daughter Katharine McAllister, also of San Diego; and one grandchild.

No public services are currently scheduled, though a celebration of life is being organized for sometime in the spring.

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SIDEBAR: Where Was the Media? A Pattern of Missed Accountability

Dan McAllister's ability to win six consecutive elections—often by landslide margins—despite serious allegations and audit findings raises uncomfortable questions about local media's role in holding elected officials accountable.

A Timeline of Journalistic Gaps:

2009-2010: The Buried Audit The county paid $73,000 for a forensic audit that found McAllister's office had improperly withheld $8 million from taxpayers and compromised data integrity. The audit was completed in March 2009 but not released until February 2010—only after The San Diego Union-Tribune filed a California Public Records Act request.

Despite these damaging findings becoming public just months before the June 2010 election, McAllister ran unopposed and won easily. There is no evidence of sustained media scrutiny or demands for reforms during or after the campaign.

2006-2007: The First Harassment Case Suzanne Torres's sexual harassment lawsuit received initial coverage from Voice of San Diego and the North County Times when filed in late 2006. But when the case was settled privately in December 2007, no media outlet appears to have reported the settlement or followed up on the allegations in subsequent election cycles.

McAllister won re-election unopposed in 2010, 2014, and 2018. Campaign coverage from these years shows no mention of the harassment allegations or the audit findings.

2021-2022: The Hidden Settlement The most egregious failure came with the Heredia case. Nataly Heredia filed her sexual harassment lawsuit in early 2021—a matter of public record. In July 2022, the county paid $105,000 to settle the case.

This settlement occurred just four months before the November 2022 election, in which McAllister faced challenger Greg Hodosevich. Despite being a six-figure taxpayer-funded payout to settle harassment allegations against a sitting elected official during an election year, not a single news outlet reported it.

McAllister won re-election with 74% of the vote. Voters went to the polls completely unaware that their county had just paid $105,000 to settle sexual harassment claims against the treasurer-tax collector.

2024: Discovery "By Chance" The Heredia case only came to light in August 2024—more than two years after the settlement—when Union-Tribune reporter Lucas Robinson happened upon it while reviewing county litigation records for an unrelated story.

As Robinson explained in a KPBS interview: "I was just going through some lawsuits and just found this by chance. It was like, gosh, this is a huge deal. And it hadn't been reported at the time for some reason."

The phrase "by chance" is particularly telling. Court records of lawsuits and settlements involving public officials are public information. Reviewing them should be routine practice during election cycles, not a matter of chance discovery.

What Should Have Happened:

Basic election-year accountability journalism would have included:

• Regular review of county litigation records involving elected officials
• FOIA requests for settlement agreements and amounts
• Follow-up reporting on closed cases and their resolutions
• Candidate questionnaires addressing past controversies
• Investigation of audit findings and implementation of recommendations

The Cost of Silence:

The media's failure to report these issues had concrete consequences:

• Voters were denied information material to their electoral decisions
• McAllister faced no electoral accountability for management failures or misconduct
• Taxpayers paid six-figure settlements without public knowledge or debate
• The pattern of behavior continued unchecked for years

How Media Silence Suppressed Competition:

Perhaps most significantly, the lack of investigative reporting created a self-reinforcing cycle that suppressed electoral competition:

McAllister ran unopposed in 2010, 2014, and 2018—winning three consecutive terms without a single challenger on the ballot. He faced only token opposition in 2022 (winning with 74% against Greg Hodosevich) and had been preparing to run for a seventh term in 2026 before his abrupt retirement.

This pattern is extraordinary for someone managing $18 billion in public investments and collecting $9 billion in annual property taxes. Positions of this magnitude and visibility typically attract qualified challengers—unless the incumbent appears unassailable.

Potential candidates make strategic decisions about whether to run based on perceived vulnerabilities. A candidate considering a challenge would research the incumbent's record, looking for:

• Management failures or audit findings
• Controversial decisions or settlements
• Patterns of misconduct
• Any opening that might make a race competitive

Had the 2010 audit findings been prominently reported and followed up during subsequent elections, qualified candidates—particularly certified public accountants or financial professionals—might well have challenged McAllister on competence grounds.

Had the Torres settlement been reported in 2007 and referenced in subsequent campaign coverage, it would have created a vulnerability that challengers could exploit.

Had the Heredia lawsuit and $105,000 settlement been reported in 2022, Hodosevich might have mounted a far more effective challenge, and other candidates might have entered the race.

Instead, the absence of critical reporting created the impression of an incumbent without controversy—someone so competent and popular that challenging him was futile. The local media's coverage during election years typically focused on McAllister's staged publicity events (like wearing a Santa hat to announce tax refunds) rather than investigating his office's operations or reviewing public records for lawsuits and settlements.

This dynamic helps explain why someone with McAllister's record of audit failures and harassment allegations could serve six terms spanning 23 years, mostly without opposition. The media didn't just fail to inform voters—it failed to create the informational environment necessary for competitive democratic elections.

When McAllister finally faced the prospect of running in 2026 with his full record exposed, he instead retired abruptly with 17 months left in his term. One can reasonably infer that he recognized what informed electoral competition would look like—and chose to avoid it.

Broader Implications:

The McAllister case illustrates a systemic problem in local government coverage: elected officials in low-profile positions—particularly those managing technical operations like tax collection and investments—receive minimal investigative scrutiny even when managing billions in public funds.

It took more than two decades, multiple lawsuits, compromised audit findings, and over $100,000 in taxpayer settlements before the full pattern of McAllister's misconduct became public. And even then, it only emerged after he had already retired.

"There is a good-government obligation to disclose the results of an audit the taxpayers paid for," said Robert Fellmeth of the Center for Public Interest Law in 2010, questioning why the Kessler audit wasn't discussed at public meetings. That same obligation extends to the media: to routinely monitor, investigate, and report on how public officials conduct themselves—especially during election campaigns when voters can hold them accountable.

The McAllister story is ultimately one of institutional failure at multiple levels: county officials who approved settlements in closed sessions and never disclosed them publicly; supervisors who declined to comment when allegations finally surfaced; and a media establishment that failed to perform basic watchdog functions during six consecutive election cycles.

San Diego voters deserved better. The women who filed harassment complaints deserved better. And taxpayers who funded the settlements deserved to know how their money was being spent.

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Sources

Obituary and biographical information:

McDonald, Jeff. "Dan McAllister, San Diego County's treasurer-tax collector for a generation, dead at 74." The San Diego Union-Tribune, December 17, 2024. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/12/18/dan-mcallister-san-diego-countys-treasurer-tax-collector-for-a-generation-dead-at-74/

"County Mourns Passing of Retired County Treasurer-Tax Collector Dan McAllister." San Diego County News Center, December 17, 2024. https://www.countynewscenter.com/county-mourns-passing-of-retired-county-treasurer-tax-collector-dan-mcallister/

"Longtime county tax collector Dan McAllister dies months after retirement." KPBS, December 17, 2024. https://www.kpbs.org/news/politics/2025/12/17/longtime-county-tax-collector-dan-mcallister-dies-months-after-retirement

"Retired county Treasurer-Tax Collector Dan McAllister dead at 74." Times of San Diego, December 17, 2024. https://timesofsandiego.com/life/2025/12/17/retired-county-treasurer-tax-collector-dan-mcallister-passes/

"Longtime county treasurer-tax collector Dan McAllister dies months into retirement." NBC 7 San Diego, December 17, 2024. https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/longtime-county-treasurer-tax-collector-dan-mcallister-dies-months-into-retirement/3947941/

Sexual harassment allegations and investigations:

Robinson, Lucas W. "San Diego County's longtime treasurer has retired. He left a trail of achievements—and claims of sexual harassment." The San Diego Union-Tribune, August 11, 2024. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/08/11/san-diego-countys-longtime-treasurer-has-retired-he-left-a-trail-of-achievements-and-claims-of-sexual-harassment/

Bowen, Andrew, and Lucas Robinson. "As San Diego County treasurer retires, history of sexual harassment claims emerge." KPBS Midday Edition, August 14, 2024. https://www.kpbs.org/podcasts/kpbs-midday-edition/san-diego-county-treasurer-retirement-followed-b-sexual-harassment-claims

Conaughton, Gig. "County rejects McAllister harassment claim." The San Diego Union-Tribune, January 30, 2007. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2007/01/30/county-rejects-mcallister-harassment-claim/

"In the News." Voice of San Diego, December 7, 2006. https://voiceofsandiego.org/2006/12/07/in-the-news/

Financial audit and management failures:

McDonald, Jeff. "Auditors find fault in county tax office." The San Diego Union-Tribune, February 6, 2010. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2010/02/06/auditors-find-fault-in-county-tax-office/

Retirement announcement and circumstances:

"Treasurer-Tax Collector McAllister to retire with 17 months remaining in term." Times of San Diego, July 25, 2024. https://timesofsandiego.com/politics/2025/07/25/treasurer-tax-collector-mcallister-retire-17-months-still-term/

"Longtime county treasurer-tax collector retires." Valley Roadrunner, August 6, 2024. https://www.valleycenter.com/articles/longtime-county-treasurer-tax-collector-retires/

Interim appointment process:

"Who will be San Diego County treasurer, tax collector? Supervisors set timeline." The San Diego Union-Tribune, August 27, 2024. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/08/26/cpas-financial-managers-wanted-supervisors-lay-out-timeline-for-naming-new-county-treasurer/