It was inspiring to see the grand jury report dropped on the issue just before the end of last year during the winter holidays.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Click here<\/a> to read the Grand Jury report.\u00a0<\/p>\n At tomorrow\u2019s 9:30 a.m. OC Supervisors meeting<\/a>, elected officials are expected to consider a meek response<\/a> to the harsh grand jury report about their raises.\u00a0<\/p>\n Grand jurors got it essentially right that during the county\u2019s laughable public budget deliberations \u2013 which has morphed into an unveiling of official priorities as opposed to really seeking public input \u2013 there was no serious talk of raising county supervisors\u2019 pay during hard economic times.\u00a0<\/p>\n But grand jurors missed their mark by saying that county supervisors didn\u2019t advertise what they were doing or that they minimally met state transparency standards.\u00a0<\/p>\n They clearly did \u2013 as noted in their draft response.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe County disagrees that the action occurred with minimal public notice and limited discussion. The item was posted publicly, published on the Internet, and processed in accordance with all applicable Government Code noticing requirements, which provided two separate opportunities for public review and comment over a four-week period. As the Grand Jury acknowledges, one member of the Board spoke in favor of the item, while another member dissented and voted no on the salary increase.\u201d<\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to read the draft response.<\/p>\n Voice of OC wrote about the proposed changes ahead of the final adoption of the pay hike \u2013 an important point that the grand jury missed.\u00a0<\/p>\n The media wasn\u2019t asleep on this one.\u00a0<\/p>\n We advertised it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Our county reporter Noah Biesiada did his job, writing a daily about the proposed pay hike just before the second reading of the proposal at the supervisors\u2019 meeting in late June.\u00a0<\/p>\n [Read: OC Supervisors Set to Quietly Give Themselves a 25% Raise<\/a>]<\/p>\n Orange County Supervisors are correct to assert in their draft response that they advertised their sloppy last-minute pay raise with what I call the BAM standard \u2013 the Bare Ass Minimum.\u00a0<\/p>\n They met the state\u2019s three-day noticing requirement under the state\u2019s open meetings law to adopt their pay raise \u2013 twice.<\/p>\n But officials didn\u2019t really advertise it, especially not during public meetings on the budget.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet the most glaring no-comment in local history is the proposed response to the grand jury\u2019s damning allegation that county executives blew them off when they asked the same questions I asked in my original column on this issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n Who\u2019s idea was it to raise politicians\u2019 pay?\u00a0<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what we know.<\/p>\n Democratic Supervisor Katrina Foley voted against the idea and was transparent when asked about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI said, you won\u2019t get my vote for that,\u201d Foley said in a phone interview, last July on the issue, adding that she didn\u2019t think the county staff were the genesis of such raises.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the time, County Spokeswoman Molly Nichelson responded to my questions by saying, \u201cWe cannot confirm where the idea came from but know that we do ensure compensation is comparable and reasonable with our peer counties.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt had to come from a board office,\u201d Foley said at the time, \u201cIt\u2019s my understanding it\u2019s Janet and Don.\u201d<\/p>\n Two other Democrats \u2013 Supervisors Vicente Sarmiento and Doug Chafee \u2013 were so embarrassed by the ensuing media coverage of their pay raise vote that they later announced bids to donate their extra salary to local charities.\u00a0<\/p>\n [Read: Two Orange County Supervisors Donate Raise to Charity After Backlash<\/a>]<\/p>\n To his credit, the only supervisor to outright defend the pay hike \u2013 disguised as a peg to Superior Court judge pay \u2013 both in public and to reporters directly was Republican Supervisor Don Wagner, currently running for Secretary of State.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhile salary increases for electeds are never popular, we are paid significantly less than many of the folks under us in the organization, including other electeds. And the rate had not been revisited in 20 years,\u201d Wagner argued last July.\u00a0<\/p>\n Republican Supervisor Janet Nguyen \u2013 who Foley tagged as a key instigator of the raise \u2013 only issued a meek comment on the vote last July through her official spokeswoman saying, \u201cI joined my colleagues in supporting this because it hasn\u2019t been looked at since 2005.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The Orange County Register Editorial Board also took notice of the pay hike, raising concerns about just exactly where the idea came from.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c\u200b\u200bIf supervisors believed they deserved a big raise, they should have been transparent,\u201d reads an editorial published last July<\/a>. \u201cSupervisors undermined public confidence in their leadership. Since taxpayers learned about the vote, the blowback has been intense,\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Credit to Orange County grand jurors for pushing for an answer to the question of who cooked up the idea of hiking politician pay.\u00a0<\/p>\n And kudos to them for letting us know that everyone in the county bureaucracy keeps running from this question.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/OCBoardofSupervisors_May20_2025_Taylor-22.jpg\")
Supervisor Katrina Foley listens to during public comment during the Orange County Board of Supervisors meeting on May 20, 2025. Credit: ERIKA TAYLOR, Voice of OC<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/OCBoardofSupervisors_May20_2025_Taylor-38.jpg\")
Supervisor Janet Nguyen at the Orange County Board of Supervisors meeting on May 20, 2025. Credit: ERIKA TAYLOR, Voice of OC<\/p>\n