Orange County supervisors Tuesday tentatively approved an ordinance to regulate sober-living facilities, but not before two board members criticized the effort.
With next month’s election as a backdrop, Supervisor Todd Spitzer, who is vying to unseat District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, peppered the county’s top prosecutor with the timing of the ordinance he proposed and criticized how it was drafted.
Supervisor Shawn Nelson, who recently endorsed Spitzer for D.A., also slammed the effort and suggested the county start with implementing a law that’s been on the state’s books for 13 years.
Board Chairman Andrew Do joined Supervisors Lisa Bartlett and Michelle Steel in voting for the ordinance, which would require all alcohol, narcotic and drug abuse programs located in unincorporated areas to register with the county Health Care Agency, with a second reading expected at the board’s Oct. 30 meeting. Spitzer and Nelson abstained.
Rackauckas said there has been a proliferation of businesses, particularly in the coastal cities, that are conspiring to defraud insurance companies by either overbilling or providing unnecessary services to substance abusers.
“It’s a whole fraudulent insurance billing scheme,” Rackauckas told the supervisors.
The proposed ordinance “will help us get more information on where the places are and which treatment centers are affiliated with which sober-living homes,” Rackauckas said. “It’s really going to help us a great deal working on this problem.”
State law requires facilities that offer alcohol or drug abuse programs to register with counties, but Orange County officials are unaware of any county in California that has a registry.
Rackauckas, who has assembled a task force to crack down on the sober-living homes industry, said the ordinance would provide a model for cities to adopt.
Spitzer quizzed Rackauckas on why he hadn’t done anything about the problem over the last several years. When Rackauckas responded that recent “myriad complaints” spurred him to act, Spitzer countered that state and federal lawmakers representing Orange County have tried to tackle the problem for the past several years, “and you just decided to do something about it now.”
“I suppose you could have done something on it, too,” Rackauckas replied.
“Thank you for blaming the board for a lack of diligence,” Spitzer said.
Under further questioning from Spitzer, Rackauckas acknowledged there was no punishment for any business for failing to register, but that he would use civil actions to go after those that do not sign up with the county.
Spitzer argued that the HCA ought to be spearheading the legislation and creating a registry and faulted Rackauckas for not looping in that agency until a meeting on Oct. 1.
“This was a complete hoax today, a waste of our time,” Spitzer said.
Nelson said he read the state law and noted that it already mandates the county create a registry for the drug and alcohol abuse treatment businesses, but that has never been done. He argued that Rackauckas would have trouble enforcing any civil actions against businesses when they have not even had an opportunity to register.
“We don’t even have the basics set up,” Nelson said. “Wouldn’t it make sense to do what we’re required to do first? Do we really need a directive from the Board of Supervisors to just follow the law?”
Bartlett argued that Rackauckas’ proposal would require the businesses to disclose affiliations with other related businesses.
“If all we want to do is that, then I’m not against that, but we should just state that,” Nelson said. “All this does is restate the entirety of the state law, except that it adds the provision you brought up.”
Spitzer also raised the potential legal problem of superseding state law, which is not allowed. County Counsel Leon Page, however, said the county’s ordinance would be OK if the aim was to “exercise a power granted by the state but not going above and beyond” it.
The proposed ordinance would require operators to register, making them available for random and periodic inspections by the HCA.
“… You (can’t) even open up a lemonade stand without getting an inspection and an OK from the health department, and yet you have these halfway houses dealing with people, especially from out of state, and basically providing a medical service that is completely unregulated and unknowable in terms of locations and operations,” Do said before Tuesday’s meeting.
According to the state Department of Health Care Services, there were 140 licensed outpatient drug and alcohol addiction treatment and recovery centers, and 323 halfway houses in Orange County as of Aug. 8.
“This does not include unlicensed facilities or numbers of sober living homes, many of which are operating as treatment centers,” according to a county staff report.
Rackauckas recently filed criminal charges against 11 people he said were involved in a multimillion-dollar insurance fraud scheme at a sober-living facility.