September
14, 2014
Voice
of OC
By
Nick Gerda
Responding
to a grand jury report calling for greater ethics oversight in Orange County
government, county supervisors are slated Tuesday to tell jurors they won’t
implement their recommendation for a campaign reporting and ethics commission.
“The
recommendation will not be implemented because it is not warranted and is not
reasonable,” the supervisors’ proposed response states.
It points to
its own plan to contract with the state Fair Political Practices Commission to
enforce campaign contribution limits as the best option.
“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.”
In their
June report, the grand jury called on the Board of Supervisors to
help create a strong, independent county ethics “program” to police the conduct
of county officials and lobbyists.
“Ethics
bodies work effectively to deter, detect, and punish ethics violations,” said
the 29-page detailed report. “Vigorous ethics monitoring and enforcement is
necessary to develop and maintain trust in government.”
The
supervisors’ proposed response “disagrees wholly” with this finding.
“The
effectiveness of the ‘ethics bodies’ is a matter of opinion and difficult to
determine. The Grand Jury’s report did not provide any metrics or analysis to
explain how ‘effectiveness’ of an ethics body is defined nor did they provide
any evidence or examples of said effectiveness,” the proposed response states.
The grand
jury also urged supervisors to put the issue before the voters on the next
available general election ballot to create an Orange County Campaign Reporting
and Ethics Commission, “similar to commissions in other jurisdictions in
California.”
It estimated
the yearly cost of an ethics commission at about $500,000 or less than 0.01
percent of the county’s total annual budget. The report said the percentage is
roughly the same as the far larger city of Los Angeles spends on its ethics
commission.
“The
potential cost of an ethics body is outweighed by its potential benefits,
including coordinated oversight, transparency, independence, and creating an
atmosphere of deterrence to law violations and corruption that could contribute
to improving overall trust in local government,” the grand jury wrote.
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.
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