Marin County taps new director of finance

Mina Martinovich, a veteran of county finance, has assumed a new role as head of the department after taking the reins from her boss, who retired after more than 30 years this spring.

Hired by Roy Given in June 2011, Martinovich served seven years as assistant director of finance before being named director last month. Her annual salary is $235,102.

Given retired as director of finance — a job that included the posts of auditor, controller, treasurer and tax collector — in April and moved with his wife to Sonoma County, close to his son and daughter who live in Rohnert Park.

He said he decided retire when he did so that he could help care for his 9-month-old granddaughter. That allowed his daughter to return to her job as a kindergarten teacher in Novato.

Given said the only thing he disliked about working for the county was commuting to work from Novato.

“I really liked what I did,” he said. “I just found something that I felt was more important to do with my time.”

A native of Novato, Given grew up one of eight children. His father worked as a cab driver and his mother was a homemaker.

“My father worked really hard,” Given said. “He didn’t make great money, but we always had enough to eat. He was able to save and buy a house. It showed me how important it was to work hard.”

Given believes that having a parent at home watching over him and his siblings was important. “I think that made a big difference in the way we grew up,” he said.

After working his way through college earning a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Sonoma State University in 1990, Given switched to accounting after initially studying computer science because it was difficult for him to get access to the computer lab and work at the same time.

Shortly after graduating, Given began working for Marin County as an entry level accountant. He worked his way up, first to senior accountant, then tax manager, then chief deputy auditor-controller and then assistant treasurer-tax collector before being appointed director of finance in 2011.

A big part of Given’s job, and somewhat surprisingly, his favorite part, was interacting with members of the public who had questions about their tax bills.

“Nobody likes paying taxes or not getting information they need,” Given said. “I don’t like paying taxes, and I’m a tax collector.”

Given takes pride, however, in the fact that when members of the public left his office, “most of the time they at least felt that they had been helped.”

During his sendoff, Marin County Administrator Matthew Hymel said, “Roy exemplifies the principles of good government and customer service. There are so many examples where I’ve referred someone to Roy, and they’ve gotten their issue taken care of because Roy listened to them. They may not have loved paying the process of paying taxes but they understood it.”

Like Given, Martinovich also worked her way up the ladder to her current position.

She grew up in Belmont, and earned her bachelor’s in accounting from the University of San Francisco. Before starting work at the county, she worked for four years in the private sector for KPMG International Limited, a multinational professional services network.

“There are things that the county offers that aren’t monetary that appealed to me,” Martinovich said. “It’s not about making a profit. It is about working for the collective good. That is something that resonates with me very much.”

Martinovich lives in Sebastopol with her husband and two sons, who are 6 and 8. She said her husband was a firefighter but had to retire due to an injury.

“Things happen for a reason,” Marintovich said. “The silver lining is he has been able to stay at home with our two boys.”

As finance director Martinovich leads a team of 61 full-time equivalent staff positions and manages an annual departmental budget of $10.3 million.

As the county’s chief fiscal officer, she is charged with maintaining the accounts of county government, the county’s school districts, and the dozens of special districts within Marin County. She administers the county’s major financial, budgetary, payroll, fixed asset and tax apportionment/collection systems.

Given said, “The supervisors made a good decision by hiring Mina. She worked really hard. I have nothing but good things to say about her.”