Bloated office budgets, politicized staffers and taxpayer-funded multimillion dollar political slush funds for county supervisors keep fueling banana republic politics across OC.
That’s the vibe from the latest Grand Jury report diving into the discretionary spending accounts that county supervisors crassly granted themselves in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis.
To read the grand jury report, click here.
Yet despite those rather stark and recent warnings, county supervisors are ready to grant $1.6 million more of the murky spending to themselves at tomorrow’s regularly-scheduled public meeting – buried in an agenda packed to the gills before they take a two-month summer vacation.
[Read: OC Grand Jury Questions Why County Supervisors Need Millions of Discretionary Dollars]
In all, there’s 18 different spending requests from every county supervisor with the exception of Supervisor Vince Sarmiento.
In addition, Supervisor Janet Nguyen – who was able to pack hundreds of supporters into the supervisors’ chambers earlier this month – is set to get a whopping $3.7 million in political play money, evening up with her colleagues, who have been able to do the same in recent years.
Birthing Spending Accounts For Politicians
When county administrators gave each supervisor $10 million discretionary spending accounts in 2021 as part of a huge federal COVID bailout package that arrived in OC that year, it was predictable that putting so much money directly in politicians’ hands would get politicized.
And it has.
Those funds are exactly what got former County Supervisor Andrew Do a five-year prison stint after steering millions of the funds to nonprofits slipping him bribes, diverting them from programs that were supposedly going to feed seniors in his district during the height of the pandemic.
[Read: Former OC Supervisor Sentenced to 5 Years in Federal Prison in Bribery Scheme]
Supervisors Reward Campaign Supporters with Cash
Every year since they were granted, discretionary funds have helped county supervisors’ re-election campaigns as the funds are often distributed by supervisors playing Santa across their districts to a host of city leaders and nonprofits they want support from.
For example, earlier this year Supervisor Katrina Foley – the board’s only incumbent headed to a November runoff – got to hand out significant sums to projects across the Fifth District just before the June primary, ahead of a 90-day deadline established by state law trying to keep these funds from being used to help elections.
In earlier disbursements, the City of Costa Mesa got $2 million for a skatepark – a great photo-op for Foley but zero correlation to COVID.
That kind of spending also helps supervisors generate tag lines for a mountain of political mail sent out just before the June primary.
“When local businesses, nonprofits and restaurants were struggling to keep their doors open, Katrina Foley took action and delivered $2.2 million to help the people,” reads an ad funded by the OC Employees Association advertising her campaign, noting the funds also went to a series of “artists and performance venues.”
Who Gets To Grab Some Cash?
Tomorrow, Foley will get to grant more gifts throughout her district – as she gears up for a tightly-contested November election against Assemblywoman Diane Dixon.
Read: Campaign Spending Heats Up in OC Board of Supervisors Races
Of the supervisor’s $390,000 proposed spending on tomorrow’s agenda, $250,000 is going to Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino Counties, who’ve endorsed her reelection campaign.
She’s also sending $50,000 to the city of Laguna Beach for a new firefighting system after every city council member endorsed her campaign.
The remaining funds are smaller disbursements to nonprofits and school districts including the Pacific Chorale, Boys and Girls Club and the Newport Mesa Schools Foundation for Grants to Teachers.
Other supervisors are also scheduled to make grants from their discretionary spending accounts tomorrow – almost as if in a big, collective middle finger to local grand jurors.
The biggest spend comes from Supervisor Janet Nguyen, who’s greenlighting $500,000 to the city of Garden Grove to help residents impacted by the chemical tank incident last month.
Supervisor Don Wagner is sending $300,000 to a veterans nonprofit, another $50,000 to stock fish in Irvine Lake, and a host of other programs.
Supervisor Doug Chaffee is spending $250,000 on a sports complex in Stanton, and another $5,000 to the Brea Chamber of Commerce.
County Struggles to Track Millions in Special Spending
For years, the spending of discretionary funds has been badly tracked – with county officials recently putting up stale webpages after public questions.
It’s the usual County of Orange half-baked way – declaring transparency but just throwing up a mishmash of charts and numbers that aren’t always accurate and don’t really allow taxpayers to understand how the funds have been spent, much less any connections to supervisors or their campaigns.
I’ve spent many years now writing about the folly of putting taxpayer dollars – especially COVID funds – directly into politicians hands, and continue to wonder why Orange County community leaders just stand by, watching five politicians fuel banana republic politics across the region.
[Read: Santana: Orange County Supervisors Confront Themselves]
The trend has already spread to Irvine, where recent Voice of OC reporting called out local politicians for an incredible swelling of spending on staff, seemingly applying the supervisors’ scam to use taxpayer funds to promote themselves and encourage the building of political machines across OC.
[Read: Irvine City Council Quietly Doubles Their Personal Budgets Ahead of Deficit]
It was inspiring this month to see the OC Grand Jury tackle the issue hard, even giving me the last word of their report, quoting one of my recent columns, noting “there’s no area more in need of reform — or more like termination — than county supervisors discretionary spending, which was minimal for decades with traditional OC leaders having an aversion to what many call political slush funds.”
Historically, given Orange County’s conservative politics, there were very little discretionary funds granted to supervisors – for fear they would become political slush funds.
County supervisors’ spending was kept on a short leash – something supervisors bitterly complained about but got no relief from until they utilized the COVID crisis to create the funds.
It’s created an array of lopsided spending – given that different politicians have represented the five supervisorial districts in recent years – with some supervisors, like Foley, getting two bites at the apple by representing both the second and fifth supervisorial districts after redistricting.
The sense of entitlement over the funds is clear in Supervisor Janet Nugyen’s public argument that because former Supervisor Andrew Do stole first district discretionary funds, and some of those funds are now being sent back to the county, she should get to play with that money and spread it around her district.
COVID’s pandemic impacts to residents are in the rearview mirror, yet the same discretionary spending machinations are in front of the Orange County Board of Supervisors tomorrow.
I find it particularly interesting that supervisors’ discretionary funds have never been officially replenished since the first COVID deposits – which never really had much of a nexus to the pandemic but were all about promoting supervisors and have been systematically stockpiled by these politicians – only to be spent at their leisure.
It’s especially noteworthy that county supervisors have never tried to reauthorize the spending accounts with any kind of public vote – a pretty solid acknowledgment that to try to reauthorize the funds could wake up the public to their incredibly political nature.
