New questions are emerging as Orange County leaders seek to understand the extent of the corruption that took place under former Supervisor Andrew Do. Chief among those questions: How did the corruption go undetected for so long?<\/p>\n
The Board of Supervisors got its first official debriefing Tuesday from outside auditors hired to review county contracts approved during Do\u2019s time in office \u2014 before he went to prison for bribery. The debriefing was based on the first phase of the auditors\u2019 report, released earlier this month<\/a>.<\/p>\n Many of the audit\u2019s findings were uncovered by LAist<\/a> in recent years and involve millions in taxpayer money that was directed to nonprofits and businesses associated with Do\u2019s family, friends and political donors.<\/p>\n Keep up with LAist.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, you’ll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less. <\/p>\n Do is currently serving a five-year prison term after admitting that nearly $8 million in taxpayer funds that were supposed to feed those in need were diverted for personal gain, including $385,000 to purchase a home for Do\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n At their Tuesday meeting, several supervisors asked the auditors, from the firm Weaver, to dig deeper. They also questioned how and why early indications of wrongdoing went uninvestigated.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were people that were trying to draw attention to this, and those in positions of more executive authority \u2026 didn\u2019t pay attention,\u201d said Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento, who represents District 2.<\/p>\n How to encourage staff to speak up<\/p>\n Sarmiento and Supervisor Katrina Foley, who represents District 5, both questioned how to better encourage county employees to speak up about potential wrongdoing \u2014 and how to ensure their concerns are taken seriously. <\/p>\n \u201cI think we have really ethical people that work in this county,\u201d Sarmiento said. \u201cAnd I’m sure somebody saw something because these are, you know, hundreds of contracts with hundreds of thousands of dollars involved.\u201d<\/p>\n Foley noted that years ago she had heard concerns about the county\u2019s contract for COVID-19 testing during the pandemic. She said when she asked several top county administrators about it, \u201cI was basically told there’s nothing to see here.\u201d<\/p>\n The recent audit found that 360 Clinic billed the county for some claims while receiving private insurance payments for the same claims, among other concerns largely echoed in previous LAist reporting<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aAt some point we’ve gotta figure out why we don’t see what’s actually there,\u201d Foley said.<\/p>\n What happens next? <\/p>\n Supervisor Janet Nguyen, who represents Do\u2019s former district, District 1, asked the auditors to delve deeper into the payments to 360 Clinic as they move into phase two of the audit. She also said she wants a deeper investigation into Do\u2019s use of an outside printing firm to send mailers to constituents about the 2020 Tet Festival. Foley said she and other supervisors would normally use the county\u2019s in-house printer for such jobs.<\/p>\n \u201cWe also need to continue to unearth to see, what else did we miss?\u201d Nguyen said.<\/p>\n Phase two of the audit will look at an even bigger range of contracts considered high priority \u2014 worth $1.7 billion. The first phase of the audit looked at 145 contracts worth about a half-billion taxpayer dollars.<\/p>\n Go deeper …<\/p>\n Here’s a look at some of LAist’s coverage of one of the biggest corruption scandals in Orange County history:<\/p>\n LAist investigates: Andrew Do corruption scandal<\/a> How to watchdog your local government<\/p>\n One of the best things you can do to hold officials accountable is pay attention. Your city council, board of supervisors, school board and more all hold public meetings that anybody can attend. These are times you can talk to your elected officials directly and hear about the policies they\u2019re voting on that affect your community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New questions are emerging as Orange County leaders seek to understand the extent of the corruption that took…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,2084,6705,106482,4764,24196,4767,106483],"class_list":["post-235555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-andrew-do","tag-janet-nguyen","tag-jill-replogle","tag-katrina-foley","tag-orange-county-supervisors","tag-vicente-sarmiento","tag-weaver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235555","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=235555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Ex-Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do is ordered to pay $878,230.80 in restitution<\/a>
‘Robin Hood in reverse.’ O.C. Supervisor Andrew Do resigns and will plead guilty to bribery conspiracy charge<\/a>
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