Orange County Tuesday filed a counter complaint against its nonprofit developed to manage its mental health wellness facilities, alleging Mind OC was over charging clients and questioning other financial arrangements that came to light in the investigation of former Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do, who is serving a five-year federal prison term for bribery.<\/p>\n
An audit in mid-2024 found that Mind OC had\u201d38 performance deficiencies that presented substantial risk to the county\u2019s mandate and plan to provide these critical services, fiscal management and compliance with state and federal regulations,\u201d according to a statement from the county.<\/p>\n
The nonprofit was launched in 2017 to help the county build out mental health services that would include \u201cwellness hubs\u201d for mental health crisis and substance abuse disorder facilities.<\/p>\n
County officials say scrutiny disgraced former supervisor Do\u2019s corruption led to the discovery of \u201cirregularities between Do\u2019s office and Mind OC.\u201d<\/p>\n
Josie Batres, the wife of Do\u2019s chief of staff at the time, was hired in 2021 as a consultant for $275,000, officials aid. Officials say the nonprofit cannot produce any evidence of what Batres did to earn that money.<\/p>\n
The county also claims the nonprofit improperly benefited from space it was supposed to sublease at its campus in Orange to behavioral health service providers. Representatives for Orange County said Mind OC \u201cdisregarded the pre-approval requirements, resulting in a windfall of excess profits,\u201d and was paying just a dollar in annual rent as part of the agreement with the county.<\/p>\n
The nonprofit charges its health providers more than $2 million annually to cover property management expenses, which were passed on to the county, officials alleged.<\/p>\n
The county canceled its lease with Mind OC in the dispute, prompting the nonprofit to sue the county for more than $10 million in damages. The dispute is over how much Mind OC can charge service providers.<\/p>\n
Orange County Board of Supervisors Vice Chairwoman Katrina Foley lashed the nonprofit when Mind OC officials addressed the board at its meeting Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Batres contract \u201cled the county to dig deeper,\u201d Foley said. \u201cWe wanted to better understand what the county\u2019s dealings with Mind OC were and whether there was compliance with the ground lease\u2026 What we learned was there was an exorbitant amount of rent that was being charged to the service providers. They were making a profit off a taxpayer investment\u2026 Meanwhile, Mind OC was paying one dollar in rent\u2026 We uncovered millions of dollars in profits not flowing back into the county\u2019s continuum of care that was staying in Mind OC\u2019s bank account.\u201d<\/p>\n
Foley added that, \u201cMind OC has refused numerous times to cure the fault in our ground leases so the county terminated the lease. It is a landlord-tenant situation. Mind OC then filed a lawsuit against the taxpayers. Let\u2019s be clear, it\u2019s suing the taxpayers, and seeking more than $10 million in damages, despite the fact Mind OC only paid one dollar in rent\u2026 At this point we just want the keys. Give us the keys if you truly believe that we need these facilities to care for the community and the mental health crisis in the county. Give us the keys.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mind OC officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Orange County Tuesday filed a counter complaint against its nonprofit developed to manage its mental health wellness facilities,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,21290,1570,21097,5751,17811,11936],"class_list":["post-214002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-dispute","tag-health","tag-mental","tag-nonprofit","tag-sues","tag-system"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}