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Orange County officials regularly encourage employees to speak up when they see any wrongdoing and report it to their long running fraud hotline.
“There is a functioning fraud hotline system in place,” said Leon Page, the county’s top lawyer whose office oversees the hotline, at the board of supervisor’s Nov. 19 meeting last year in the wake of the bribery scandal that saw County Supervisor Andrew Do plead guilty to federal charges.
[Read: Former OC Supervisor Andrew Do Pleads Guilty to Bribery Scheme]
“Callers can submit complaints with complete anonymity,” Page continued. “Those complaints will be fully investigated.”
Yet it’s rare that anyone hears about where these complaints go.
“The complaining party never finds out what happened with their complaint,” Page said in an interview last Friday. “Having a confidential process prevents the process from being abused and weaponized.”
Out of 1,497 tips to the hotline from 2020 to 2023, only 14 investigations were shown as having ended in a finding of fraud, waste, or abuse according to the county’s annual fraud hotline reports.
County officials have never disclosed what happened in those cases.
County reports do not detail the employees, departments, or incidents where problems were discovered, nor do they list any of the consequences they faced.
Nearly all the hotline complaints from that period were referred out to other entities, including 313 cases that were referred to other county departments, according to county records.
Many of the other rerouted complaints get sent over to the Orange County District Attorney, according to Patrick Bruso – a senior lawyer for the county who manages the hotline.
Bruso noted that most of the complaints they handle internally revolve around issues like county employees committing time fraud or misusing county resources.
Do Fraud Hotline Investigations Make a Difference?
Every investigation the fraud hotline handles starts with either a call to the hotline number, 714-834-3608, or through the online complaints portal.
Many of the tips looked into by county staff are handed off to individual county department’s HR teams according to Bruso, who then refer their findings to department heads to decide what to do.
But there are many cases where employees say officials do not do a good job of looking into their own conduct.
Most recently, workers at the OC Treasurer Tax Collector complained publicly about their experience working for the department’s elected chief Shari Freidenrich – highlighting that while they’d complained about the problem for years, county leaders did not take action until now.
[Read: Santana: Should OC Supervisors Manage A $17 Billion Public Investment Portfolio Alone?]
Just last month, numerous county employees at the Social Services Agency accompanied by the head of the county employee union showed up to speak at the supervisor’s regularly scheduled meeting, airing complaints about the department and a fear of speaking out.
A poll conducted by the OC Employees Association laid out a scathing lack of confidence in the agency to handle internal complaints, with 72% of Child and Family Services employees saying they were “considering leaving or transferring due to a toxic work environment.”
As far back as 2012, there were concerns that county internal HR managers failed to properly investigate harassment complaints against former county executive Carlos Bustamante, who was later convicted of multiple felony sex crimes.
[Read: OC Supervisors Deny Bungling Bustamante Investigation]
Charles Barfield, general manager of the OC Employees Association, said county staff don’t trust the hotline.
“The main reason employees hesitate to report concerns is a culture of fear that exists throughout the County,” Barfield wrote in a Tuesday statement. “Many believe the hotline is neither anonymous nor trustworthy, with some experiencing backlash after reporting issues. Until these issues are resolved, the hotline will not be effective.”
What Does the Public Find Out When the Investigation is Over?
Of the nearly 1,500 complaints the hotline received from 2020-2023, a total of 89 led to internal investigations that were documented in county reports, with only 14 probes ending in a finding of fraud, waste or abuse.
There aren’t any details about what departments or employees were involved in those cases, with the hotline leaving out most details beyond the closure of the investigation.
“Four employees were committing misappropriation of County resources,” read one of the cases listed in the 2023 report. “The substantiated case was referred to the appropriate County department for resolution and corrective measures. Appropriate action was taken by the department.”
When asked about why the county doesn’t detail specific findings, James Harman, the chief assistant county counsel who also helps oversee the hotline, said the focus on confidentiality is aimed to protect employees who face investigations.
“If we got into identifying departments we might be identifying who the individuals are, someone could surmise that,” Harman said. “Those concerns are why we do a summary of those allegations.”
Bruso, who directly oversees the hotline, said he personally handles investigations on issues where the HR team was unable to look into it due to a conflict of interest, and also handles investigations of any county department heads who face complaints on the hotline.
“There’s not as many of those,” Bruso said about the complaints involving department heads. “We do handle a few of those every year.”
Bruso sends his reports to Page, the county’s top lawyer, who reviews them and decides whether to share the findings with the county board of supervisors.
Those reports are not made public.
“We view the fraud hotline fundamentally as a management tool, kind of like an audit,” Page said in an interview last Friday. “It exists so we can inform county managers and department heads about issues arising in their departments.”
Despite the focus on confidentiality when it comes to the fraud hotline, Page said employees should report misconduct by any means necessary.
“When it comes to reporting misconduct, or waste fraud and abuse, our approach is there is no wrong door,” Page said. “You can talk to your supervisor. You can call the fraud hotline. Call (CEO) Michelle Aguirre. Call Leon Page.”
“The important point is to get the complaint, because once we have it we’re in the position to look at it,” he continued. “We would investigate.”
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