OC Supervisors just can’t take a hint on Ethics Commission

GotEthicsNewIn June, the 2013-2014 Orange County Grand Jury continued to comment on the lack of a county ethics commission, which a previous grand jury had recommended in its 2012-2013 term. The grand jury reiterated it’s previous recommendation stating; “Ethics bodies work effectively to deter, detect, and punish ethics violations. Vigorous ethics monitoring and enforcement is necessary to develop and maintain trust in government.”

The commission further noted, regarding the Board of Supervisor’s proposal to hand of the responsibilities of monitoring to the State Fair Political Practices Commission, significant problems of handing off monitoring to the FPPC.

“The primary disadvantage of FPPC enforcement of TINCUP is that it defeats one of the main purposes of an ethics oversight body, which is to be a coordinating and central body of all ethics and reporting monitoring and enforcement activities in the County. The TINCUP ordinance only addresses campaign reporting and contribution limits relative to twelve elected offices in the County. It does not address the entire spectrum that an ethics body would address, including ethics oversight for other elected officials in the County such as School Boards and Special Districts, non-elected officials including those on various boards and commissions, as well as lobbyist reporting. Neither does it include the important tasks of coordinating such enforcement and correlating collected information in a central database.”

The Voice of OC, in a story today, and on Tuesday Morning further points out:

The grand jury also said an independent ethics commission was less likely to be influenced by county supervisors than the FPPC, which would rely on the supervisors for its funding. If supervisors didn’t like what the FPPC was reporting about them, they could cut its funds.

The supervisors twice threatened similar cuts to the grand jury when board members didn’t like the grand jurors’ findings about them.

Orange County Board of Supervisors
Orange County Board of Supervisors

But in the Board of Supervisors response, which they will consider adoption of on Tuesday, the Board is having nothing to do with the grand jury’s recommendations. They instead are still holding on to their proposal for FPPC monitoring, which has been effectively been made moot, by legislative action a few weeks ago.

“The recommendation will not be implemented because it is not warranted and is not reasonable,” The board response continues; “As a result, the recommended efforts are duplicative and costly as the Board has placed a measure on the November ballot to allow the FPPC to prosecute violations of the Orange County Campaign Finance Reform Ordinance pending future legislative authorization.”

Apparently, in addition to lacking ethics, or a real desire to respond to the concerns raised by the grand jury regarding monitoring and enforcement of local ethics and campaign finance regulations imposed by the voters of Orange County, The Board of Supervisors cannot pull their collective heads out of their tail-ends and simply read the writing that is clearly on the wall. Specifically, that their FPPC enforcement proposal, even if approved by an uninformed electorate clamoring for any type of reform in November, is DEAD! It will never be able to garner support from the California legislature.