By SELWYN HARRIS

“I am not a racist,” says Shirley Matson.

The Nye County tax assessor, whose controversial stance on illegal immigration erupted into public view last week, will have a chance to plead her case in front of county commissioners on Friday.

An agenda action item suggests that commissioners may attempt to discipline Matson. She used her office computer and her elected position to request that sheriff’s deputies check the immigration status of Hispanic workers building the county’s new jail.

The Pahrump Valley Times discovered emails sent from Matson’s private email address to local residents, including prominent current and former town and county office holders, that described illegal aliens in extreme language — she called illegal aliens locusts, and pregnant Latinas the country’s worst enemies, and even seemed to suggest that uneducated Latinos are the cause of Autism and other developmental disorders.

She has not apologized, but has hired an attorney.

During an interview with the Pahrump Valley Times on Monday, Matson, who has retained the legal counsel of local attorney Nancy Lord, said she believes words she used were not inflammatory or insensitive.

“Not in my experience. I have experienced that. This isn’t trumped up stuff,” she said.

Matson was referring to her time as a resident of Escondido, a community near San Diego, Calif. She says she and her daughter were both victims of crimes at the hands of what she claims were illegal aliens.

“She had just gotten her new black Honda CRX and she was driving up to Valley Center on Valley Parkway and they ran right into her and crashed and ran off and they left her there,” she said.

Matson also says her language stems from other incidents, for instance when her car’s registration tags were stolen from her mail box, and times when alleged immigrants urinated or defecated in her yard, or peeped in the windows at her former home. Asked whether she called police or confronted any of the alleged illegal aliens, she says she called police.

But checks of police records through a public information officer with the San Diego Police Department, who also has access to San Diego County Sheriff’s records, revealed no police reports filed by anyone named Shirley Matson. Matson claimed the car wreck caused her to declare bankruptcy. She vehemently denied making any of the incidents up.

“I am not a liar,” she said.

As for proof, none was offered.

As far as retaining the services of Lord, who has become a prominent courtroom defender of Pahrump’s Concerned Citizens for a Safe Community, Matson says she is trying to keep her reputation from being ruined.

“There are people that are so upset, they’re actually, even my appraisers that work for me are scared to death; they’re afraid of retaliation because now people are saying that, well, the assessor can change our assessed value and they are coming up with all kinds of things that are distorted,” she said.

Matson says she has clerks who process the property assessments and appraisals, and for the most part, she does not go through the files except to retrieve reports for the Department of Taxation.

“I’ve only been there two months. I wouldn’t even have time to adjust anybody’s assessment. We’re very heavily regulated by the Tax Board. If I did something like that, they’d arrest me. I mean this is just nuts,” she said.

Matson’s image problems began when she sent a stern email to Nye County Sheriff’s officers demanding that they verify the nationalities of men working on the new jail. She said her staff was scared and that she had been getting complaints. Asked on Monday which staff members were complaining, she refused to say for fear that someone in the sheriff’s department would seek retribution.

In defending herself during the interview Monday, Matson did say that she was first made aware that there could be an issue with the workers’ immigration status by a volunteer at the sheriff’s department named Ben Gulley. She said the 74-year-old complained about the workers not being from Pahrump.

“That’s what Ben did. You know he stopped me when I was going in … he says there’s not one American on that construction site,” she said.

Gulley says that is not quite accurate. He admits he did have a conversation with Matson that lead up to her sending the email to sheriff’s deputies.

“She stopped me in the parking lot. She wanted to know why we were driving through their lot. She started talking about illegal aliens. I figured she just came back from a meeting or something. Tea Party or Minute Men. We had a long talk, but I did a lot of listening,” he said.

Matson told Gulley that he should tell Sheriff Tony DeMeo about the workers. Gulley admits he is not fond of illegal aliens, but he says he told Matson that he wouldn’t tell DeMeo anything and suggested that she tell the sheriff if she was so concerned.

“I didn’t think she would do it,” he said. “I took it with a grain of salt.”

As for the type of language used in some of Matson’s private emails, Gulley said he does not wish to be associated with it.

“She can take that ride by herself,” he said.

Besides using her conversation with Gulley and the alleged personal experiences with illegal aliens, Matson also claims in her defense that the private emails — which lost their privacy when they were sent to a PVT reporter as well as when Matson decided to enter the assessor’s race in March 2010 — may have been doctored.

In one, an email dated Oct. 29, Matson and Lord said they believe it was somehow altered.

“You can plainly see that those names up there in the corner are some selectively left on and some are selectively left off that’s been doctored with,” Matson said.

Dates aside Matson is not disputing that she wrote the email, but says it was written well before the date indicates. Lord takes issue with the fact the email ended up in more hands than Matson intended.

“We don’t know exactly how this thing got from the chat room into an email; it’s very easy to move things around when they are electronic, but you are taking a private commentary of Ms. Matson several years ago and raising it in the context of an email that was perfectly legitimate, expressing legitimate concerns,” Lord said.

Still, Matson maintains she is not a racist. She points to the fact that her son-in-law is Mexican.

“We have spent many Thanksgiving dinners with their family. They have been in California probably long before I have been,” she said. Asked if and when a Mexican becomes a U.S. citizen, are they still considered “dirty and filthy,” Matson responded “probably not.”

As for an apology, she stands by her language, no matter how hurtful it might be.

“I don’t owe an apology to somebody about my thoughts; they’ll never get one. I’m not gonna do it,” she said.

During the interview Monday, Lord said the entire episode was an opportunity for the community to take a look at why companies are hiring illegal workers.

“This government has made it so cumbersome and so expensive to have an employee that a business is actually benefitted by having an illegal, you can fire them they can’t take you to unemployment, you don’t have to pay a third more than their salary in taxes and worker’s comp and social security and all the other stuff,” she said.

No evidence of any illegal workers working on any county projects has emerged.

On March 15, County Manager Rick Osborne received a letter from Layton Construction informing him that all of their employees are U.S. citizens and have verified the subcontractor’s employees are either U.S. citizens, or are working legally in the United States. The letter went on to say Layton Construction voluntarily uses E-verify to ensure that the employees’ social security numbers are valid and whether the employee is a U.S. citizen or has completed their I-9 form and is working legally.

The letter is now posted inside the assessor’s office, located next to the sheriff’s office off East Basin Avenue.

Voters offended by Matson’s language with regards to Latinos have left messages and made phone calls attempting to organize a recall effort if Matson doesn’t resign her office. By state law, any recall effort could not begin until July 2.

PVT Editor Matt Ward contributed to this story.