The Orange County Board of Supervisors needs fresh talent to head off impending crises, especially on the budget. Tim Shaw, whom I interviewed back in March, hopes to do that if elected from the 4th District. Its territory includes Fullerton, Stanton, Buena Park, La Habra, Brea, Placentia and part of Anaheim. 

Currently government affairs director for the Pacific West Association of Realtors, he’s also a trustee for the OC Board of Education, which enjoys one of the most frugal and sound budgets in California. In the June 2 election, the Republican Shaw finished second, with 31.3%, to Democratic Buena Park Mayor Connor Traut’s 33.3%. They’ll go to a run-off in November.

The race saw the Republican Lincoln Club’s embarrassing endorsement of Fullerton Mayor Fred Jung, a former Democrat turned No Party Preference who is championing tax increases in his city. Jung finished fourth, with 17.6%, even below the 17.9% of Democratic La Habra Mayor Rose Espinoza.

The Lincoln Club has since endorsed Shaw and contributed $2,700 to his campaign.“I think I have a decent enough relationship with them,” Shaw told me. 

The board on June 23 adopted a controversial $10.5 billion budget for fiscal year 2026-27, which began on July 1. Technically it’s balanced. But in the May 20 letter for her Recommended Budget, County Executive Officer Michelle Aguirre warned, “Budgetary pressures driven by ongoing state and federal policy changes, an unpredictable economic environment, limited revenue growth and rising costs of doing business persist.” 

At the June 9 Board meeting, Aguirre cautioned the budget was $75 million short of self-balancing. “Simply put, we have exhausted all resources available to us, but we are resilient,” she said.

The most crucial numbers will come out in December, when Auditor-Controller Andrew Hamilton releases the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for fiscal year 2025-26, which ended on June 30. The prior ACFR, for 2024-25, ran an unrestricted net position of a negative $957 million for governmental activities. 

Also troubling was how the board treated department heads. At the June 9 meeting, Treasurer-Tax Collector Shari Freidenrich, just re-elected with 71% of the vote, warned cutting 15 of her 78 staff would “create substantial operational risks and will impair the ability of my office to perform legally mandated functions.” Term-limited board Chairman Doug Chaffee, whom Shaw seeks to replace, cut her off after one minute. 

At the June 23 meeting, District Attorney Todd Spitzer, also a former supervisor, called the lack of budget deliberations “outrageously laughable,” then was silenced by Chaffee. 

“The public would have been better served had Chairman Chaffee given the department heads more time,” Shaw said.

Despite Freidenrich’s conclusive endorsement by voters, the board still has not returned control of the county’s investment portfolio to her, which it yanked in December 2024 due to alleged personnel problems. In March, I wrote about concerns former Treasurer-Tax Collector John Moorlach had about the portfolio’s solvency since it was taken from her prudent hands.

Returning the portfolio to Freidenrich “makes sense to me,” Shaw said. 

As Shaw and I were talking on Tuesday, oil prices were rising again after President Donald Trump attacked Iran numerous times in response to the Tehran’s regime’s attacks on oil tankers. 

“That definitely affects local government that’s running police cars and fire trucks,” Shaw said. “Local government can’t control that. But it comes back to prioritizing” to control the budget. 

If he wins, Shaw would flip the board from 3-2 Democrat to 3-2 Republican. The public-employee unions don’t want that. “The fire guys went heavy for Connor in the primary,” he said. Traut’s extensive union endorsement list includes the Orange County Professional Firefighters Local 3631.

Déjà vu. When Moorlach ran for supervisor in 2021, I helped on his campaign. The unions outspent him three-to-one. They ran the most vicious smear ads and elected Democrat Katrina Foley, still on the board. Now the county is staring into a budget hole because supervisors didn’t know how to say “No” to the unions. 

Hey, guys, if you had let Moorlach win, he would have fixed the budget, just as he did after the 1994 bankruptcy. And now there would be money for raises. 

John Seiler is on the SCNG Editorial Board