An Orange County Grand Jury report released Wednesday criticized county officials for expanding staffing and funding for the offices of Orange County supervisors.
But Orange County Board Chairman Doug Chaffee and Vice Chair Katrina Foley said the criticism was misguided.
The grand jurors argued that over the past three decades, the staffing and budgeting for the supervisors has “outpaced population growth, inflation and the county’s direct service responsibilities.”
The report suggested the county chief executive officer should take on more of the responsibilities.
The grand jurors noted that the county supervisors have a budget of about $2.5 million, with an average of a dozen paid staffers for each of the five supervisors, who have about $4 million in discretionary funding.
The grand jury again criticized the supervisors for an increase in salaries — as it did in December — despite a retort from the CEO’s office that the salaries were aligned by state law with the compensation for state judges.
The grand jury argued that the expansion of staffing and budgeting “has increased supervisors’ reliance on politically appointed staff for policy guidance and operational insight. This has the potential to create distance from the board and county executive team, including department heads who hold subject-matter expertise.”
The grand jury noted that the average number of staff positions for supervisors is 35 in Los Angeles County, 15 in San Diego County, 12 in Orange County, nine in Riverside County, eight in San Bernardino County, two in Santa Barbara County and one in Imperial County.
A former county executive said on background it was a goal for years to grow the level of staffing for the supervisors to more closely mirror the levels in neighboring counties such as San Diego and Riverside.
“When I got elected in 2014 I think I had eight staffers,” former Orange County Supervisor Lisa Bartlett said. She added some offices had less, but had taken on less responsibilities for serving on other agencies the supervisors are involved in such as the Orange County Transportation Authority.
There are about 20 regional boards such as the AQMD and sanitation districts that supervisors serve on, Bartlett pointed out. It falls on those supervisors and their staff to be up to date on the policies on those agencies as well.
Former Supervisor John Moorlach said he recalled having six staffers.
“If I were to get snarky I’d say are these people just going to events and ribbon cuttings?” Moorlach said. “But I had a staffer who covered OCTA, and on CalOptima, so that’s another several hours of research and study. I can’t speak for now, but I can speak for then and I didn’t think I was over-staffed. We barely had room for interns.”
Chaffee said, “Half my staff are interns. They start on a relatively low salary and work their way up.”
Chaffee said Orange County is nearly the same size as San Diego.
“Each of our offices get the same budget,” Chaffee said. “If there’s anything left over it goes back to the general fund.”
Foley said her budget is “spent on community causes. I’m giving back the taxpayers their money. I’m spending money on gaps in funding for community support like parks, trees, theaters, workforce development, after-school programs, meals (for the needy) and community services.”
She pointed to a new cafe in Lions Park as an example.
“Now they have a cafe that will generate revenue with half going to the library,” Foley said. “And half to the park to support programming for the park. It’s a revenue generator and it supports a small business. The reason I funded that was because the city wasn’t going to build it otherwise.”
A skate park in the city was also aided by county funding, she said.
“The city would not have extended it without the extra funding,” Foley said. “Our team works extremely hard on policy initiatives. If I didn’t have policy staff to help me to navigate all of the federal, state and county bureaucracy for sand replenishment as an example it would be impossible to do it all by myself. If I didn’t have staff I wouldn’t have been able to initiate a lot of the initiatives we now have, like the climate action plan…. They don’t understand how it works.”
Foley added, “My staff — every single person on my team — is working very hard every day doing substantive policy that is making substantive changes. I couldn’t do it without them.”