{"id":225990,"date":"2026-03-18T22:54:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T22:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/225990\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T22:54:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T22:54:07","slug":"oc-supervisors-offer-risible-defense-of-their-49000-pay-hike-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/225990\/","title":{"rendered":"OC supervisors offer risible defense of their $49,000 pay hike \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

Orange County supervisors recently offered their long-awaited\u00a0response<\/a>\u00a0to a December grand jury report eviscerating the board for quietly granting itself a $49,000 pay hike. Doug Chaffee, Janet Nguyen and Don Wagner approved the rebuttal without discussion. Katrina Foley \u2014 the only board member to vote no on the 25% raise \u2014 opposed the response, while Vicente Sarmiento abstained. It\u2019s not surprising the board has handled this embarrassment in its typically squirrelly way.<\/p>\n

For a refresher, the grand jury\u00a0noted<\/a> that supervisors obscured the raise, which boosted their pay above the governor\u2019s, from public scrutiny. It said the \u201ctiming was especially troubling\u201d given county \u201chiring freezes and budget constraints.\u201d It argued the \u201cdecision was not only tone-deaf \u2014 it reflected a deeper disconnect from the board\u2019s duty to serve the public with transparency and fiscal responsibility.\u201d It also questioned the timing \u2014 just days after supervisor Andrew Do was handed a five-year prison term related to a bribery scandal.<\/p>\n

This Editorial Board took particular\u00a0umbrage<\/a>\u00a0at the shady origins of the proposal. If board members thought they deserved a big pay hike, they should have defended it vigorously rather than \u201cquietly\u201d approved it. The board argued the raise was properly placed on the agenda and discussed at a public meeting. No one is disputing that the vote was handled legally. We\u2019re questioning whether it was given the analysis and discussion it deserved.<\/p>\n

The grand jury called for specifics including rescinding the hikes, creating an independent compensation review panel and creating a better process for future hikes. The board\u00a0responded<\/a>\u00a0in a legalistic manner: \u201cThe recommendation will not be implemented because it is not warranted or is not reasonable.\u201d It cited statutes suggesting it needn\u2019t change any procedures. County taxpayers deserve more than bureaucratic speak from their elected representatives.<\/p>\n

Per\u00a0reports<\/a>, the board\u2019s attorney also questioned whether supervisors could reduce salaries mid-term. Whatever the legal arguments, nothing is stopping all supervisors from giving their extra salary to charity (as Chaffee and Sarmiento announced following public blowback) and rescinding the raises for future board members. What say you, supervisors?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Orange County supervisors recently offered their long-awaited\u00a0response\u00a0to a December grand jury report eviscerating the board for quietly granting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,1965,975],"class_list":["post-225990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-editorials","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225990","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=225990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}