The Orange County Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved a $5.8 billion spending plan for fiscal year 2015-16 that essentially guts a watchdog agency for the Sheriff’s Department while keeping funding for it intact for possible reform.
The supervisors decided to keep $450,000 in the budget for the Office of Independent Review, but signaled they will let the contract for the agency’s leader, Steve Connolly, expire in August. The top investigator’s contract is also due to run out next month.
Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens asked the supervisors to keep Connolly in place as officials consider how to reform the agency.
Earlier this month, the supervisors slammed the job done by independent contractor Connolly since the Office of Independent Review was created in reaction to a rash of excessive force cases in the Orange County Jail in 2008.
The county agency helps sheriff’s investigators review complaints. It reports directly to the Board of Supervisors.
Connolly was making $210,000 annually plus expenses.
Board Chairman Todd Spitzer has complained that the agency did little to warn supervisors about any issues and mostly offered after-the-fact recitations of the conclusions made by investigators. Spitzer wants to reform the office and look at how other governments elsewhere do it.
At the board’s June 9 meeting, Spitzer pointed to the jailhouse snitch scandal that led Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals to issue an unprecedented ruling to remove the Orange County District Attorney’s Office from the prosecution of Scott Dekraai, the worst mass killer in the county’s history.
The fallout from the handling of Dekraai’s case has forced prosecutors to offer lenient plea deals to convicted killers in unrelated cases.
Supervisor Shawn Nelson voted against keeping the funding in place for the agency as he has in the past.
Hutchens told City News Service that the Office of Independent Review has also been used in Fullerton and Anaheim to handle cases in those cities.
“It’s been a very effective model,” Hutchens said.
She said the agency is especially helpful because it enjoys an attorney- client privilege that allows it access to information that would otherwise be kept private under the Peace Officers Bill of Rights, a state law that guarantees certain due process protections for law enforcement officials.
“I think it’s very important to keep Steve Connolly in place because we should not have a gap in oversight,” Hutchens said.
Since Connolly’s contract expires at the end of August, it would appear county officials would not have time to set up a new model for the agency by then, the sheriff said.
Spitzer cited civil oversight agencies in various cities as possible models, but Hutchens noted that she is an elected official unlike police chiefs who are appointed by mayors or city managers.
The agency also reassures the public that a complaint is being investigated impartially, Hutchens said.
The annual budget approved by the supervisors is 6 percent larger than the previous fiscal year.
County CEO Frank Kim has said a “slow consistent recovery” has allowed officials to try to catch up with projects deferred during the Great Recession, but not at the pace of previously more robust economic recoveries.
By July 1, 2016, however, the county will have made its final payment on the debt related to the 1994 bankruptcy, Kim said.
The $22 million in debt payments related to the bankruptcy come out of the budgets for OC Waste and Recycling and OC Parks.
This fiscal year marked a significant first in that officials haven’t had to shell out $18 million from the general revenue to pay for bankruptcy debt.
County officials expect a 4 percent growth in property tax revenue and a 3 percent bump in revenue for law enforcement from sales taxes.
The budget also includes $2.1 million to start work on a juvenile multipurpose rehabilitation center that will receive most of its construction funding from a state grant.
— Wire Reports