grand jury report<\/a> released on June 12. <\/p>\nWhere it concerns elected officials like Parrish and Freidenrich, the report claims that the Orange County Board of Supervisors largely have their hands tied by the state\u2019s constitution and state law. <\/p>\n
Still, the grand jury suggests that county charter reforms could give supervisors the power to remove troublesome officials by a supermajority vote on the five-member board. <\/p>\n
The report also recommends consolidating the assessor and clerk-recorder\u2019s office to improve oversight while making the treasurer an appointed position in the future.<\/p>\n
Parrish faced H.R. investigation<\/p>\n
Jurors interviewed county staffers and requested public records and claim issues persist at the assessor\u2019s office after an H.R. investigation in 2023 sustained allegations that Parrish violated gender discrimination and retaliation policies while harassing a subordinate employee with a disability. <\/p>\n
\u201cTestimony obtained during the investigation consistently characterized the office as lacking in stable executive leadership,\u201d the report claimed. \u201cWitness accounts describing inconsistent decision-making and repeated lapses in judgment raise doubts about the Assessor\u2019s ability to manage the operational and administrative responsibilities of a complex public agency.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jurors described Parrish\u2019s frequent absence from the office as an \u201copen secret,\u201d in the report and blamed his refusal to modernize operations for lagging behind on technological updates.<\/p>\n
Parrish rejects both reforms where it concerns his seat and office. <\/p>\n
\u201cWith respect to the removal of an elected county official, the power is vested in the voters as part of a recall,\u201d he said. \u201cThe assessor and clerk-recorder office duties are also significantly different. Combining these offices will not provide any cost savings or efficiency.\u201d <\/p>\n
The assessor and treasurer-tax collector are described in the report as the \u201ctwo most financially significant elected offices in the county.\u201d The assessor\u2019s office spans 250 employees and manages the evaluation of $850 million in taxable properties.<\/p>\n
The treasurer oversees tax collection and counts a staff of 70 employees. Freidenrich\u2019s office managed a $17-billion investment pool until late 2024 when supervisors stripped her of that authority.<\/p>\n
Mark Geragos, an attorney for Freidenrich, criticized the grand jury report.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe voters overwhelmingly rejected the notion that Freidenrich should be removed,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the same time, Orange County is the only county in the state to have moved the financial fiduciary duties from the treasurer. We\u2019ve seen this movie before when Orange County last went bankrupt.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Persistant fear\u2019 in Freidenrich\u2019s office<\/p>\n
An internal investigation in 2022 substantiated allegations that Freidenrich threw office keys at another employee out of anger, an incident it noted as a likely violation of workplace violence policies.<\/p>\n
The grand jury report cited a recent Orange County Employees Assn. survey of treasurer-tax collector staff along with its own independent interviews to show a culture of \u201cpersistent fear, distrust and low morale\u201d permeates the department after the investigation.<\/p>\n
In the lead up to the June primary, Freidenrich tried to fire assistant treasurer-tax collector Dana Schulz, who filed paperwork to run against her. Freidenrich later cruised to an easy victory over Schulz at the ballot.<\/p>\n
Jodi Balma, a political science professor at Fullerton College, agreed with the report that most county official races are powered by name recognition and incumbency.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe electorate is so ill-informed, uninformed and misinformed that I wished the report had come out before the election,\u201d she said. \u201cI would have loved for it to have been part of the public discourse. If the report had come out before filing deadline \u2014 that would have been ideal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Should the assessor and treasurer positions continue to be elected without the oversight reforms proposed, Balma offered another idea.<\/p>\n
\u201cState law moved the sheriff and district attorney\u2019s terms to presidential election cycles, but left all the other county offices behind,\u201d she said. \u201cAt the very least, Orange County and all other counties need to move the rest of their offices to the same election cycle as the sheriff and district attorney races.\u201d<\/p>\n
County Supervisor Don Wagner pushed back on the grand jury\u2019s suggestion that a supermajority of the board could oust an elected official.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sure you want to give that sort of additional power to supervisors,\u201d Wagner said. \u201cIf it\u2019s misconduct that, God forbids, rises to the level of ex-supervisor Andrew Do, law enforcement can step in. If it\u2019s something short of that, there\u2019s always a recall.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the wake of the June primary, an Orange County grand jury report proposed charter reforms that would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,101647,9664,149492,348,722,149493,346,149495,149494,4840,2054,3729,225,149496,31028],"class_list":["post-368686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-assessor","tag-county-official","tag-freidenrich","tag-investigation","tag-misconduct","tag-o-c-grand-jury","tag-office","tag-orange-county-government","tag-parrish","tag-power","tag-reform","tag-report","tag-state","tag-subordinate-employee","tag-treasurer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368686","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=368686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}