Orange County is the safest large county in California—and the people who live here, along with the law enforcement professionals who work tirelessly to protect it, want to keep it that way.

Law and order come before progress and prosperity. Before a community can thrive, it must first be secure. That is why public safety is the first and most fundamental responsibility of government. Yet our County CEO is treating it as if it were just another budget line item — somewhere between potholes and park maintenance. And if this continues, Orange County residents will pay the price, sacrificing our hard-earned reputation as a beacon of law and order in a state that too often prioritizes the murderers over the murdered.

Last November, 75% of Orange County voters overwhelmingly supported Proposition 36—a clear mandate to restore accountability after years of legislative neglect and to give prosecutors the tools to hold repeat thieves and drug dealers accountable while offering treatment to those struggling with addiction.

Despite being under a CEO-imposed hiring freeze since January, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office has delivered exactly what voters demanded: real results.

According to the Judicial Council of California, in just the first seven months since the law took effect, Orange County prosecutors filed more than a quarter—27%—of all Prop. 36 drug cases statewide and accounted for 11% of all defendants who elected treatment – and those numbers continue to climb. That’s leadership, not luck.

But while prosecutors and law enforcement continue doing the hard work of keeping Orange County safe, the County CEO appears intent on undermining that success. The line between public safety and disorder is already perilously thin—and the CEO is acting as though it’s no more important than any other administrative concern.

On July 1, 2025, the county declared a balanced general fund budget of $5.4 billion. Just three months later, the same leadership is grappling with a shortfall in the tens of millions—perhaps even exceeding $100 million.

And the CEO’s solution? Delete public safety positions as if the work of the District Attorney were no different from any other department on the spreadsheet—interchangeable with filing permits or mowing medians.

That’s not fiscal responsibility. It’s peril in plain sight. Public safety isn’t simply another budget category. It’s the foundation on which every other public service rests. Undermine that, and everything else eventually falls with it.  Yet, that is precisely the threat Orange County is facing

With one hand, the CEO imposed a hiring freeze upon public safety positions; with the other she has deleted the very positions she made impossible to fill because they were vacant.  And while I have proposed manageable cost saving measures to help support the county, the CEO has countered with a plan to cut another 45 OCDA positions

We are already so understaffed that we’ve had to design a triage system, temporarily assigning some of our most veteran prosecutors—those handling heinous murders, gang crimes, and sexual assaults—to branch courts for a week at a time just to make ends meet and ensure our cases are preserved.

The County CEO is appointed, not elected. Once the Board of Supervisors passes a budget and allocates funds and positions to an elected department head, the CEO has no authority to revoke them from the District Attorney or the Sheriff. Only a four-fifths vote of the Board can do that—and, thankfully, the Board has historically supported public safety.

People want to work for the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. Recruits from as far as Minnesota, New Orleans, and Virginia flocked to a recent statewide prosecutor job fair just to interview with us. One candidate even drove through the night from Utah. And we need to be able to hire them. These aren’t jobs you can fill with off-the-shelf candidates. They require years of education, a heart for public service, and the rare combination of toughness and compassion—part lion, part lamb—able to fight vigorously in the courtroom while offering a shoulder to cry on for victims in the hallway.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office led the nation in holding the line for the criminal justice system. We prosecuted our 100th criminal trial before Los Angeles County had even conducted its first.

No one will die if the grass in the county’s parks isn’t mowed every week. But if there aren’t enough prosecutors to staff courtrooms and deliver the accountability residents demand, lives—and justice—are at risk.

The County CEO’s message that public safety isn’t a priority isn’t just directed to the public; it’s a disheartening message to the nearly 1,000 prosecutors, investigators, and support staff who roll up their sleeves every day to protect this community that their work doesn’t matter.

But it does matter—because the people we serve matter. Public safety matters. When my prosecutors enter the courtroom, they do so on behalf of the People. And the people of Orange County want one thing above all: to be safe.

Todd Spitzer is district attorney of Orange County.