Orange County supervisors deadlocked on a proposal to disclose when they give contracts to family members, with some saying it was a necessary step to combat potential corruption.
Yet other supervisors said it was just an attempt to punish another supervisor for sending money to a nonprofit where his daughter is listed as president, adding it was legal.
An investigation by LAist reporter Nick Gerda found Supervisor Andrew Do voted on contracts that included $13.5 million to the nonprofit Warner Wellness Center, where Do’s 22-year-old daughter is listed in tax filings as president.
Do never disclosed any connection to the nonprofit publicly.
On Tuesday, Do left the chambers during the discussion on the issue at the board meeting, but has previously denied any wrongdoing and publicly accused Gerda of falsifying documents that show his daughter’s name on the paperwork without validated proof.
But LAist and the OC Register editorial board pushed back against those accusations, saying they’re false allegations.
These aren’t the first questions over Do’s conduct in his nearly eight years on the OC Board of Supervisors, including recent fines from state regulators over pay to play politics and his resignation from the CalOptima board after state auditors questioned the agency’s high executive salaries.
[Read: Top Official Resigns From OC’s Health Plan for the Poor Following Revelations of State Probe]
While all county supervisors acknowledged what Do did is legal, Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento first proposed new rules that would’ve required more disclosure of any spending connected to a supervisor’s family last month, which were finally discussed on Tuesday.
[Read: County Leaders to Discuss Ethics Of Steering Business to Family]
At Tuesday’s meeting, Sarmiento repeatedly said his goal was not to punish Do, but to ensure members of the public had a better understanding of where their money was going.
“The real goal of this item is to have disclosure so the public knows when we as public servants approve millions and millions of contracts, that we’re not enriching ourselves or family members,” Sarmiento said. “I don’t want us to be known for being so closed, so unwilling to share information, and not transparent.”
Ultimately, the discussion ended in a 2-2 deadlock with Do out of the room, and no schedule for further debate on the issue.
Sarmiento said he also felt the contracting move by Do is “unethical at the very least.”
“There is a lot of corruption that’s happening in our county,” Sarmiento said, pointing to former Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu, who pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about trying to ram through the Angel Stadium sale for $1 million in campaign support from team officials.
While Supervisor Katrina Foley supported his proposal, Supervisors Doug Chaffee and Don Wagner both said they had no interest in it and challenged Sarmiento to bring forward proof of any corruption.
“I am aware of no corruption in my office,” Wagner said, at which point audible laughs could be heard from the crowd at the board meeting. “The casual charge of corruption is frankly false.”
He then pointed out the county’s ethics committee would be a better place to discuss the issue, and claimed it would be “unconstitutional,” to change the law and try to penalize Do after the fact.
“There are no, nor should there be, questions or challenges as to that particular grant of money,” Wagner said. “It’s a moving of the goal posts.”
The Ethics Committee, which is exclusively made up of appointees handpicked by county supervisors, met on Monday and did not have any discussion agendized on Do’s conduct.
Chaffee said Sarmiento’s disclosure proposal would slow down the process of getting contracts out and that it could be “discrimination” to deny a contract based on someone being related to a supervisor.
“I find that very cumbersome,” Chaffee said. “We already have state law as our guidance and our own code of ethics that seems to cover the issue.”
Multiple supervisors also claimed the spending was clearly disclosed on the county website’s home page.
OpenOC, the county’s webpage featuring publicly disclosed financial information that is linked to from the bottom of the home page, hasn’t had new contracts loaded into it since the end of 2022, and the open budget tool does not show the supervisor’s discretionary funds.
“Maybe everything is great here for now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t put more guard rails,” Sarmiento said. “There’s a difference between legally correct … and ethically correct.”
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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