Orange County Supervisors opted to keep their ambulance contractor despite calls from the OC Fire Authority’s Fire Chief and firefighters union to give the county’s largest firefighting agency the chance to handle more medical calls.
It’s the second debate county supervisors have had in two months over how their staff review contracts after they rejected their executives’ recommendation and picked a different therapy contractor onboard last month.
[Read: OC Supervisors Reject Staff Recommendation, Keep Therapy Contractor Onboard]
Falck, who already serves as the county’s ambulance operator, was the only company that offered to serve the entire unincorporated county’s ambulance needs, with county staff reporting they won every single district under their requirements for the contract.
But OC Fire Authority Chief Brian Fennessy pitched an alternative – letting the OCFA expand their partnership with their own, homegrown ambulance company in a public private partnership.
Fennessy also claimed the partnership would open the door to possible federal funding coming in for the county’s EMS programs.
“When this public private team responds, millions of previously untapped healthcare dollars would be allocated directly to Orange County,” Fennessy said at the board’s Aug. 12 meeting. “It’s clear that OCFA emergency is the better option.”
County staff did review Fennessy’s pitch, but ultimately rated it lower than the Falck program under their criteria that was approved by the Emergency Medical Services Authority, the chief state regulator for EMS services.
While supervisors ultimately stuck with their staff recommendation to hire Falck again, most of them publicly aired complaints about it.
Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento said the request for bids “pigeonholed” the county into having to pick Falck, and ultimately abstained as he argued it wasn’t really up to them to decide the contract because state law forced them to pick the cheapest option.
“We’re acting as if we can deliberate when we really can’t,” Sarmiento said.
Supervisor Don Wagner accused Fennessy of throwing “mud on the board” with his last-minute concerns around the bidding process, and questioned if any of the federal dollars would even come amid shakeups in the federal budget.
“It’s like come on guys, give those to us a little bit sooner,” Wagner said.
Wagner also raised concerns around the Emergency Medical Services Authority throwing out the county’s choice if they tried to change their criteria at the last minute.
“I just don’t think the state has demonstrated to us they’re going to say ‘oh don’t worry if you guys tinker,’” Wagner said.
Supervisors Doug Chaffee and Janet Nguyen also went with Falck, with Chaffee saying they learned about too many problems “after the fact.”
Supervisor Katrina Foley initially announced she wouldn’t be voting to give Falck the contract, instead asking to split the county between the OCFA and Falck, but ultimately changed her mind to vote in favor and said the request for proposals gave them only one option.
Foley said she wanted to “compare the two models to see what works best for our county.”
“We would have millions and millions of dollars that would be invested back into the community, dollars we will lose if we don’t allow a public private partnership.”
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.