Two Orange County supervisors Wednesday said they had no idea why Orange County Treasurer-Tax Collector Shari Freidenrich alleged the county had made risky investments when the employees who were managing the finances worked for her office.<\/p>\n
At Tuesday\u2019s Orange County Board of Supervisors meeting, Freidenrich, who had her investment authority taken away from her by the board following a report of a hostile work environment in her office, criticized the county for making risky bets on securities.<\/p>\n
The board voted Tuesday to reassign nine employees in Freidenrich\u2019s office who make the investment recommendations to the chief executive officer. The treasurer accused the county\u2019s investment policies that she said included securities on speculation interest rates would fall, but the rates went up.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s misleading people, just lying,\u201d Orange County Board Vice Chair Katrina Foley told City News Service.<\/p>\n
Foley was especially irked that Freidenrich referred to former Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert Citron, whose investment strategies plunged the county into bankruptcy in 1994.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe if the board did what we\u2019re doing and took investment authority away from Citron and engaged in more oversight and monitoring maybe the bankruptcy never would have happened,\u201d Foley said.<\/p>\n
Freidenrich\u2019s assertion the county was making high-risk investment is \u201cjust flat out dishonest and a lie,\u201d Foley said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have the same fiscal conservative, low-risk investment policy we\u2019ve always had,\u201d Foley said. \u201cWe\u2019re relying on professional experts and consultants who manage our investments just like any business person would or any resident who has investments who rely on their investment experts to guide them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The county took away investment authority from Freidenrich because of complaints from employees of \u201cmicromanaging to the point where it was creating an environment that was nearly impossible to work in,\u201d Foley said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany of the complaints lodged against her would likely have resulted in the person being terminated from the county but we\u2019re not allowed to do that,\u201d because Freidenrich is an elected official, Foley said.<\/p>\n
Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner said the county has not altered its investment policy at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been no change, no risk,\u201d Wagner said.<\/p>\n
The county board just approved a \u201cpurely administrative\u201d move \u201cto get employees doing the job into a proper place to continue doing that job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wagner said Freidenrich\u2019s complaints \u201chad nothing to do with the issue that was in front of us\u2026 We changed no part of our investment policy. It\u2019s the same professionals who were doing it under Shari are still doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two Orange County supervisors Wednesday said they had no idea why Orange County Treasurer-Tax Collector Shari Freidenrich alleged…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,25867,166,171,117493,2086,117494],"class_list":["post-270171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-claims","tag-county","tag-orange","tag-reject","tag-supervisors","tag-treasurers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270171","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=270171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270171\/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=270171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}