Orange County Supervisors might be on track to launch an independent corruption probe in the wake of former Supervisor Andrew Do’s guilty plea on a bribery conviction stemming from a contract to feed the elderly.
While Supervisors couldn’t agree on beefing up their code of ethics or hiring outside investigators on Tuesday – at least half of the current board have publicly expressed support launching the outside corruption probe at some point.
It comes after another major corruption scandal hit Orange County.
[Read: What Does Another Corruption Scandal Mean for Orange County?]
Last month, former Supervisor Andrew Do admitted to helping steer over $10 million to a nonprofit his daughter worked at in a signed plea agreement with federal prosecutors – he also admitted that he and his family received at least half a million dollars for his help.
[Read: Former OC Supervisor Andrew Do Pleads Guilty to Bribery Scheme ]
“This happened under everybody’s watch. And that’s something we’re never going to hide from, we’ll never be able to say it somehow didn’t happen,” Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento said at Tuesday’s meeting.
“There are people who either enabled, aided, or at least looked the other way on what former Supervisor Do was doing,” he said.
His colleague, Supervisor Katrina Foley, also publicly supported an outside investigation.
“I 100% support all the concepts being proposed and of course want to root out corruption,” Foley said.
And State Sen. Janet Nguyen – who’s likely to be elected to the OC Board of Supervisors – also said she supports an independent investigation in an interview with Voice of OC Publisher and Editor in Chief Norberto Santana Jr.
[Read: Santana: The Political Ghost of Andrew Do Haunts 1st District Race]
While supervisors kicked off a series of internal audits and reforms in September, they haven’t made any big changes since then.
The County of Orange is also in the midst of a lawsuit with the nonprofit Viet America Society to reclaim the money Do helped direct to them.
Supervisor Doug Chaffee and Sarmiento rolled out ideas for big shifts at the county, with Sarmiento calling for the county to hire an outside, independent investigator to review the county’s own work while Chaffee suggested ways to strengthen ethics rules.
Sarmiento said the investigation wasn’t meant to imply the county’s internal auditor was incapable of reviewing the issue, but said it’s still something they should look at doing because it could catch things the county misses.
“This is not to prevent the internal audits from going forward. It’s simply meant to be a compliment,” Sarmiento said during Tuesday’s meeting.
Sarmiento also highlighted how Anaheim leaders hired independent auditors after former Mayor Harry Sidhu pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents about trying to ram through the now canned Angel Stadium land sale for a $1 million in campaign support.
Anaheim’s independent investigators produced a 353-page report documenting loose lobbyist oversight, influence peddling by Disneyland resort area interests, developer favoritism and a disregard for state open meeting and public record laws that led to multiple reforms.
[Read: Anaheim Begins Implementing Changes From Fall of Reform Debates]
“When Anaheim realized they had a public corruption problem, one of the first things they did was hire an outside firm to make sure they had an outside, autonomous independent review,” Sarmiento said.
Chaffee suggested letting the campaign finance and ethics commission review contracts and add penalties for contractors and supervisors who made inappropriate deals, including censures for supervisors and a possible blacklisting for county contractors.
“The goal here is to unequivocally show this board is committed to ethical contracting,” Chaffee said. “The office of campaign finance and ethics shall audit the required disclosures of contractors to make sure what they say is true.”
Chaffee also said “I do support the concept of an independent audit.”
While Sarmiento, Chaffee and Foley said they supported reforms, there was disagreement over exactly how that should be rolled out or what it should look like, and they ultimately agreed to reconsider the issue at the board’s next meeting on December 3 and clarify their proposals.
“My goal up here today is to try and find what are the practical directions we’re giving to staff so they know what we’re asking them to do,” Foley said. “I just don’t know what we’re asking the staff to do.”
Supervisor Don Wagner was the sole vote against all the proposals, saying the ideas from his colleagues don’t fix the underlying problems and that willful misconduct won’t be blocked.
“Thou shalt not steal is out there and we’re not going to be able to improve upon it,” Wagner said. “As good intended as these policies are, I think they end up being window dressing.”
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @NBiesiada.
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