Orange County Supervisor Race – Fourth District


On the little watched but very important race for Orange County 4th District Supervisor: Norby vs. Espinoza

On Saturday May, 20th, David Reyes wrote a piece in the LA Times about the Norby/Espinoza contest, Upset Victor Now Faces a Foe of His Own. I will take this the opportunity to point out some flaws in Norby’s self painted image as a reformer that helped him defeat Coad.

As some of the readers may know, I am a County Health Care Agency employee who exposed mismanagement and fraud in the Health Care Agency’s management of federal HIV/AIDS grants in 2003. Three years later, the feds finally concluded their investigation and have forced the County return over $143,000 in grant funds because of their incompetence.On March 11, 2004, I sent an email about this issue to Supervisor Norby’s Chief of Staff, Eric Norby, titled “Something Supervisor Norby should be aware of”. The message said:

“Attached is my most recent correspondence to Internal Audit regarding a
complaint I filed regarding the HCA Chief Compliance Officer that resulted from
a complaint filed with the HCA Office of Compliance in February 2003. In a nut
shell, HCA management has engaged in an ongoing cover-up of improper management
of federal contracts including improper billing. The Office of Compliance did
not investigate my claim but has repeatedly stated that there was no wrong
doing. All I can say is this matter has the possibility of costing the Orange
County taxpayers a lot of money.”

My email went on to outline my concerns presented to the Internal Audit department, asking that Supervisor Norby step in before the federal government was forced to come out and conduct a site review.After I sent some supporting information to Norby’s Chief of Staff, I was unable to get any further response. Five months later, the federal agency managing the grant conducted a site review of the Health Care Agency’s management of the grant.

In March of 2006, Norby’s failure to act cost Orange County Tax Payers over $143,000. Had Supervisor Norby stepped in and forced the CEO to take action to admit the failings of HCA grant management and institute corrective action the County could have most likely avoided having to return the mismanaged funds. Because County managers ignored the problem and stubbornly refused to admit there was a problem the federal government was forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars investigating the matter and taking the most severe corrective action possible, demanding the money back.

Now, after the feds have demanded and received their money back, Chris Norby and the rest of the Board of Supervisor’s have been so isolated by County Counsel that they won’t even talk to me to find out what actually happened so that future problems like this do not occur again.

Rather than spend any time or money correcting the cause of the problem, Chris Norby and his cohorts in crime, the other Supervisors, are letting the Health Care Agency spend thousands more dollars trying to appeal the federal government’s decision.

How many whistleblower complaints and lawsuits does it take for these idiots to do their job of oversight? Better yet, how long will it take the voters to wake up and throw these idiots out of office?

Chris Norby, is nothing more than a political opportunist who led us to believe he was a true reformer.

The voters should send a message that this behavior is unacceptable.

Vote for Rosie in the 4th District Supervisor race against Chris Norby.
To find out more about the results of the federal investigation of the Health Care Agency management of HIV/AIDS grant funds visit: www.gotethics.org.

1 Comment

  1. Norby like Tom McClintock have made political careers of being contrarians.

    When all you do is vote no and oppose ideas it is the easiest job in politics.

    You don’t have to really do anything but point out flaws.

    Norby has done nothing to move the ball down the field.

Comments are closed.