Two Orange County supervisors accused board Vice Chair Katrina Foley of directing county staff on policy issues Tuesday, with Foley firing back that they were playing politics.<\/p>\n
The dispute got so heated that Orange County Board of Supervisors Chairman Doug Chaffee gaveled the meeting for a 10-minute break, and when he returned he gave his end-of-the-meeting update on his district alone and adjourned the meeting.<\/p>\n
During board comments, which are done at the end of the regular meetings, Supervisor Janet Nguyen used her time to criticize Foley and compared her to disgraced former Supervisor Andrew Do, who is serving federal prison time for corruption.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t stay silent anymore,\u201d Nguyen said. \u201cThis issue is not about policy. It\u2019s about one supervisor overstepping her authority \u2026 in order to play politics, in order to get media coverage bullying staff, playing politics, blaming other supervisors, blaming myself and Supervisor (Don) Wagner \u2026 basically being the classic flip-flopper.\u201d<\/p>\n
Foley interjected, \u201cThis is not an appropriate use of our time here \u2026 It\u2019s not policy when she\u2019s attacking me personally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chaffee bemoaned the tenor of the discussion.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be glad when this election is over,\u201d Chaffee said.<\/p>\n
Wagner and Nguyen were particularly upset about comments Foley made in a news release about the public works department putting a pause on herbicide spraying with Roundup in flood control channel as officials study the issue.<\/p>\n
The two also felt Foley accused them of not caring about the issue of landfills in the county as officials grapple with having enough room for waste.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven this last weekend when she goes out and announces a county-wide pause where we all just got the email from public works,\u201d Nguyen complained.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you\u2019re not reading that correctly,\u201d Chaffee replied. \u201cWe all have the ability to write press releases \u2026 Let\u2019s leave the attacks out. You can write your own press release if you wish. I didn\u2019t see any policy (announcements) in that press release.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nguyen replied, \u201cIt was very clear she was making a statement that none of us ever saw, and it was never voted on by the board \u2026 I just want to know what is the protocol. It\u2019s gotten to the point where it\u2019s over and over and over again \u2026 Then we get calls and we have no clue what\u2019s going on \u2026 We need to make sure there is a general understanding among ourselves and respect for each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chaffee replied, \u201cWell, that is not happening right now. Let\u2019s move on please, all right?\u201d<\/p>\n
Nguyen shot back, \u201cThe bottom line is it\u2019s misleading and extremely unfair to the rest of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chaffee replied, \u201cI don\u2019t agree with that at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wagner said, \u201cIt\u2019s not time to move on. This is an opportunity to give direction to staff, to not take direction from just one of us. Staff is not empowered and should not say, `fine, we\u2019ll do a pause.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n
Wagner said the discussion of herbicide use in the flood-control channels poses many challenges.<\/p>\n
\u201cGod forbid there\u2019s a flood and there are weeks that we haven\u2019t addressed the weeds and it causes a flood and kills somebody,\u201d Wagner said. \u201cFrankly, it\u2019s gaslighting,\u201d he continued. \u201cStaff is responding to one member of this board.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wagner noted that the vote to approve a landfill in question in the San Juan Capistrano area was taken several years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd one of us put in what a great policy it was in a newsletter,\u201d Wagner said. \u201cIt gets to the cost of doing business if we have one supervisor directing things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chaffee told Wagner, \u201c`I don\u2019t think any of this is true.\u201d<\/p>\n
Foley said in her five years as a supervisor, \u201cI\u2019ve tried my best to be respectful of my colleagues regardless of whether they were up for re-election or not, and not to personally attack them from the dais, not to politicize our work here and I\u2019ve tried to do a really good job of delivering for the residents of Orange County, specifically District 5.\u201d<\/p>\n
Foley said any discussions she has had with staff were to ensure she was using correct wording for any releases from her office. She said the news of the pause on the herbicide was \u201cshared with us and we shared it with the community exactly how it was shared with us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Foley said she has \u201ctried my best to stay out of both of your elections. It\u2019s very disappointing.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Nguyen said, \u201cIf she wants to be respectful she shouldn\u2019t have yelled at me,\u201d Chaffee gaveled the meeting, but Nguyen continued complaining about Foley.<\/p>\n
\u201cI try to keep personal attacks out of meetings,\u201d Chaffee told City News Service after the meeting. \u201cWe\u2019re supposed to set an example for civility because everyone\u2019s watching us. When we have these kinds of outbursts it\u2019s hardly civil.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wagner told CNS that \u201cSupervisor Foley did in public call out Chaffee and me and it was unfortunate for her to say we\u2019re playing politics when she\u2019s the one who called us out. It\u2019s not fair.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two Orange County supervisors accused board Vice Chair Katrina Foley of directing county staff on policy issues Tuesday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,1794,95614,47389,16976,28801,109796,2086,100140],"class_list":["post-324599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-attack","tag-foley","tag-gets","tag-meeting","tag-nguyen","tag-personal","tag-supervisors","tag-wagner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324599","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=324599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}