OC Board of Supes – Just losing it!

At yesterday’s Board of Supes meeting the Board was all bunched up over the text messages some of the Sheriff’s staff had sent to each other during the January 13^th Board of Supervisors Meeting. In addition Supervisor’s Nguyen and Norby are ready to explode over the sheriff’s decision to not provide the Board with all the recordings from that meeting. The recordings in question apparently briefly zoom in on Supervisor Nguyen texting during the meeting and attempts to zoom I on Chris Norby’s notes?

These two are wound up tighter than a cornered wet cat. Nguyen and Norby are accusing the Sheriff of “spying” on them. Note to Nguyen and Norby; it’s not spying if the alleged “spy” tells you about a 30 second or 1 minute long recordings that reveal nothing secret. Norby wants the complete tapes, apparently he wants to relive that meeting over and over again, now from a different perspective. I guess he doesn’t have anything else to do. The budget crisis isn’t really that important to him.

While I can understand that the Sheriff may have security concerns, she should in this case, release all the recordings and post online the segments where Norby’s notes and Nguyen’s testing were zoomed in on. From my perspective, they’ve asked for it, she may as well let ’em have it.  Morons may still yell at passing cars and claim you “haven’t release all the recordings,” but morons will always find something to complain about. Nguyen and Norby will probably still complain that the “Sheriff” was spying on them even after they get the tapes.

But there is an even bigger issue here which Norberto Santana covered in a post on Total Buzz last night that has me even more concerned. Norby and Nguyen seem hell-bent on contracting out the security of Board meetings and the Hall of Administration. Norby has already engaged in “preliminary negotiations’ with Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido to hire Santa Ana Police Department to take over security for the Hall of Administration. Nguyen wants to speed up the selection of a vendor by issuing a no-bid contract to take over security immediately.

As Norberto Santana points out, the result of such a move would not be cutting Sheriff’s Deputy jobs, but rater the jobs of Sheriff’s Special Officers who normally provide security services for county buildings. As Orange County Employees Assosnation General Manager Nick Berardino put it “The SSO’s had nothing to do with what took place regarding the security and the tapes. This is yet another example of how the little guys are put in harms way by the mistakes of their leadership and executives,” he said.

I wonder if Norby is playing out some sort of grudge against the SSO’s with his pressing on this issue. After all, it was a Sheriff’s Special Officer who woke him from his nap behind the bushes outside the Old County Courthouse.

You can read Norberto’s story here.

The Board has spent about twice as much time addressing the issues of security recordings and CCW permits for 200 people than time addressing layoffs of almost 300 county workers.

While they talk about non-issues, they continue their wasteful “security” improvements to  their board office lobby. While they discuss in closed session whether or not to sue the Sheriff over some surveillance tapes, they are spending no time trying to find ways to save the jobs of the dedicated public servants whose livelihoods rest in their hands.

I wish they would get their priorities straight.