The report looked at a now long discontinued program that gave a one-time payment of $4,000 to about 2,200 households. OEPA researchers ultimately found that for those who received the no-strings-attached subsidy, it did not change their reliance on homelessness services or other social services programs such as CalFresh.<\/p>\n
Findings like that are valuable to policymakers, said Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer, a Democrat who first proposed creating the office in 2021.<\/p>\n
But while Lawson-Remer is still a believer in OEPA\u2019s potential, she conceded that its current form isn\u2019t working.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s moving way too slowly,\u201d Lawson-Remer said. \u201cIt\u2019s doing way too few studies. It\u2019s just stuck in the mud.\u201d<\/p>\n
Republican Supervisor Joel Anderson, who originally supported creating the office, now calls it \u201ca huge failure\u201d with leadership that is \u201cgrossly incompetent.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you define this as a successful program in any way, shape or form?\u201d Anderson said. \u201cMy colleagues are willing to allow money to be squandered and wasted rather than address the fact that this program doesn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n
County Chief Evaluation Officer Ricardo Basurto-D\u00e1vila, who runs the office and is paid $242,000 a year, declined requests for comment.<\/p>\n
County administration stands by OEPA\u2019s work.<\/p>\n
County spokesperson Sarah Sweeney held up the office\u2019s other efforts, like a data dashboard<\/a> that aims to measure the county\u2019s performance across categories like community, empower, equity, justice and sustainability.<\/p>\n OEPA staff also provide support to other county data platforms and train county staff on how to evaluate programs, Sweeney said.<\/p>\n \u201cTaken together, OEPA\u2019s contributions position the county as a national leader in evidence\u2011based government,\u201d she added. \u201cFew jurisdictions have built comparable structures for evaluation, enterprise data management and analytic capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n While supervisors and county staff disagree over the office\u2019s success, voters will very soon get a say in its future.<\/p>\n Changes to who controls the office is on the ballot as part of a sweeping measure to reshape the structure and distribution of power in county government.<\/p>\n The ballot measure to rewrite the county\u2019s charter, known as Measure A, includes seismic changes like extending term limits for supervisors from two terms to three, letting sitting supervisors run for an extra term.<\/p>\n The measure, if passed, would also create an ethics commission and a new budget analyst office and would give supervisors the power to confirm and remove top county officials.<\/p>\n But a lower-profile part of the package would establish an \u201cindependent program auditor.\u201d<\/p>\n In reality, that section of the charter rewrite would give supervisors power over OEPA and take it away from county administration, according to Lawson-Remer, the lead architect of the charter rewrite.<\/p>\n Exact details for how OEPA will be transformed into a program auditor\u2019s office will be up to a future task force charged with implementing changes to the county\u2019s charter.<\/p>\n But Lawson-Remer thinks OEPA\u2019s placement in the county\u2019s vast bureaucracy is what\u2019s holding it back.<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t operate with authority that comes from either the board or an independent elected,\u201d Lawson-Remer said. \u201cIt\u2019s fundamentally related to the whole premise of the charter, which is that right now, all the staff kind of operate without a lot of accountability to voters.\u201d<\/p>\n A recent San Diego Union-Tribune poll<\/a> found 71% of registered voters were supportive of an independent auditor\u2019s office. But a smaller share of respondents were enthusiastic about the charter package as a whole, with 40% saying they supported it and another 25% saying they were undecided.<\/p>\n In June, supervisors voted to place the charter rewrite on the ballot. But in the run-up to the vote, Anderson introduced a rival proposed ballot measure, though supervisors ultimately backed Lawson-Remer\u2019s plan over his.<\/p>\n Under Anderson\u2019s plan, the program auditor would have been an elected official free of any influence from the Board of Supervisors.<\/p>\n Anderson thinks OEPA should be defunded. Should the charter rewrite pass, he worries a program auditor under the control of supervisors would be subservient to the county\u2019s Democratic majority.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you think they\u2019re going to ever audit anything that\u2019s going to put their leadership in a bad light?\u201d Anderson said.<\/p>\n Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe, who backed putting Lawson-Remer\u2019s plan on the ballot, said the charter rewrite is an opportunity to fit OEPA into a new county government structure.<\/p>\n \u201cI supported putting these reforms before voters because strong, independent oversight is an important part of accountable government,\u201d Montgomery Steppe said.<\/p>\n The Board of Supervisors\u2019 two other members \u2014 Paloma Aguirre and Jim Desmond \u2014 did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n Evaluating the evaluators<\/p>\n Evaluating the impact of government programs is a relatively new endeavor in the field of economics, born out of monitoring the success of public health and anti-poverty programs in developing nations.<\/p>\n But the migration to local governments has been slower.<\/p>\n With a budget of $9.2 billion, San Diego County\u2019s foray into program evaluation makes it \u201cpretty unique\u201d among local governments, said UC San Diego professor Gordon McCord, who has worked with OEPA.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s on the order of the national budgets of some of the poorest countries in the world,\u201d McCord said of the county. \u201cThe fact that the county wants to put a few of those resources into measuring whether they are spending their money well seems quite reasonable.\u201d<\/p>\n At OEPA, its annual budget has averaged about $4.6 million since being created in 2021.<\/p>\n After the county hired Basurto-D\u00e1vila in 2022, a 20-person staff was built out over the following two years.<\/p>\n Positions in the office include three department heads, seven researchers and other administrative staff, though total staff has been reduced to 16 people due to consolidation with the county\u2019s IT office and the elimination of two vacant jobs.<\/p>\n All told, the county has spent $17.4 million on OEPA since its inception.<\/p>\n![\"San](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/sut-l-charter-003_198650.jpg\")
San Diego County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer at a meeting in April. (Nelvin C. Cepeda \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n![\"County](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/PRN-L-Anderson-town-hall-5.jpg\")
County Supervisor Joel Anderson addressing constituents during a town hall meeting in Rancho Bernardo. (Amy Stark Shireman)<\/p>\n