![\"Orange](\"https:\/\/www.ocregister.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/OCR-L-OCBOSFORUM-1010-JG_4_267702990.jpeg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n
Orange County Board of Supervisors candidates for districts 4 and 5, Diane Dixon, Tim Shaw, Katrina Foley and Connor Traut during a forum at The Pacific Club on Friday, October 9, 2026, in Newport Beach. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n
![\"Orange](\"https:\/\/www.ocregister.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/OCR-L-OCBOSFORUM-1010-JG_5.jpeg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n
Orange County Board of Supervisors candidates for district 4, Tim Shaw during a forum at The Pacific Club on Friday, October 9, 2026, in Newport Beach. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n
![\"Orange](\"https:\/\/www.ocregister.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/OCR-L-OCBOSFORUM-1010-JG_3.jpeg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n
Orange County Board of Supervisors candidate for districts 4, Connor Traut, during a forum at The Pacific Club on Friday, October 9, 2026, in Newport Beach. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n
![\"Orange](\"https:\/\/www.ocregister.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/OCR-L-OCBOSFORUM-1010-JG_6.jpeg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n
Orange County Board of Supervisors candidate for district 5, Diane Dixon, during a forum at The Pacific Club on Friday, October 9, 2026, in Newport Beach. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n
![\"Orange](\"https:\/\/www.ocregister.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/OCR-L-OCBOSFORUM-1010-JG_8.jpeg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n
Orange County Board of Supervisors candidate for districts 5, Katrina Foley, during a forum at The Pacific Club on Friday, October 9, 2026, in Newport Beach. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n
Show Caption<\/p>\n
1 of 5<\/p>\n
Orange County Board of Supervisors candidates for districts 4 and 5, Diane Dixon, Tim Shaw, Katrina Foley and Connor Traut during a forum at The Pacific Club on Friday, October 9, 2026, in Newport Beach. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n
Expand<\/a><\/p>\n Incumbent Katrina Foley<\/a> is running for reelection against Assemblymember Diane Dixon<\/a> to represent the Fifth District coastal communities from Costa Mesa south and sections of inland south OC.<\/p>\n The Board of Supervisors oversees the county\u2019s $9.3 billion budget and 18,000 employees.<\/p>\n The candidates found common ground on several major issues: that artificial intelligence has a place in the inner workings of local government; public safety and affordability as the county\u2019s top priorities; the need for transparent leadership; and that they\u2019d vote \u201cno\u201d against a proposal by the OC Healthcare Agency to increase EMA Specialty designation fees charged to local hospitals from 33% to 40%.<\/p>\n But the harmony stopped there. Candidates were split on how to get the job done.<\/p>\n Foley and Traut made clear their support for a county economic development plan, a tool popular with municipalities, whose framework they said could boost city coffers without raising taxes.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019re very committed to making sure our emergency reserves and our reserve fund are fully funded. And this is why the economic development plan is critical,\u201d Foley said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is why we need to drive these entitlement projects where our land is sitting in control of private developers who are not building on the land and leaving money on the table,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Each candidate agreed that AI could be a useful tool for improving county efficiency without having to stretch its finances.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to look back at this time as the time that artificial intelligence was really moving,\u201d Shaw said.<\/p>\n \u201cAI will be able to speed up things like permitting and processing, either simple things like writing staff reports, or typing minutes for meetings,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cThey might be able to figure out which roads need to be paved soon because of AI.\u201d<\/p>\n Shaw also championed a strong approach to public safety, proposing officers \u201ctake all those even seemingly smaller crimes seriously\u201d after delivering an anecdote on his car getting broken into. \u201cYou get people, maybe arrested on the small stuff, you can catch them before they\u2019re committing even more serious crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n Candidates generally received warmly the prospect of leaning into technology to address crimes, such as deploying automated license plate readers, cameras and software in unincorporated areas of the county, but varied in their degrees of support.<\/p>\n \u201cI 100% support it,\u201d Dixon said. \u201cIt keeps our community safe. Anyone who is worried about how that affects them, if they don\u2019t commit a crime, they wouldn\u2019t be tracked down by that system.\u201d<\/p>\n Foley said the county has long invested in technology to improve public safety, including its own automated license plate readers and using body-worn cameras.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are investing in tools that keep us safe,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey use these readers to solve crime,\u201d she said of the automated license plate readers. \u201cAnd what\u2019s really important is that the county, we have really strict privacy controls in place so that there isn\u2019t an abuse of the system.\u201d<\/p>\n Shaw and Traut also voiced their support, contingent on appropriate guardrails, with Traut saying he \u201cfully opposes sharing of any data to federal immigration enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n Candidates generally supported outsourcing some county projects and opportunities for public-private partnerships, with Dixon and Shaw saying they support \u201ccompetition\u201d for projects.<\/p>\n \u201cPublic-private partnerships are a way of life in terms of my business history, and then my service on the City Council and the state Assembly, \u201d said Dixon, a former Newport Beach council member, mentioning the recently opened Witte Hall<\/a> whose funding was split fifty-fifty between the city and the Library Foundation of Newport Beach. \u201cWe have a lot of opportunities in Orange County to have successful public-private partnerships that will benefit the county, benefit the residents and the taxpayers, and help the county achieve greater heights in its projects, because rebuilding competition into the process is a very positive and successful way to go.\u201d<\/p>\n Traut called privatizing the county\u2019s core services \u201ca bad idea.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd that\u2019s because you\u2019re lacking that accountability piece and that consistency in long-term structure you have with the county,\u201d he said,\u00a0emphasizing his disagreement with a decision made last year by supervisors to privatize ambulance services.<\/p>\n Regarding the search for a new county CEO, qualities such as \u201ctransparency,\u201d \u201cexperience,\u201d \u201cconfidence,\u201d and\u00a0 \u201cintegrity\u201d were frequently named.<\/p>\n The Board of Supervisors has been searching for a new CEO<\/a> for nearly three years since former CEO Frank Kim announced his retirement in 2023 after nine years in the role. Michelle Aguirre filled the seat until earlier this year, having said she was keen to retire before too long. KC Roestenberg was named interim CEO in June<\/a>.<\/p>\n Shaw said he\u2019d be interested in a CEO with a \u201cformal education\u201d in public administration and experience leading a large organization.<\/p>\n Traut said, \u201cThe county CEO should never be elected in the county of Orange.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe must not politicize the CEO office, I will oppose it if that tries to make its way with the county,\u201d he said. \u201cThe county CEO should not be seen as the sixth supervisor. We need a manager, somebody who is not going to be a yes man to the board.\u201d<\/p>\n Ballots may be returned by mail or to the OC Registrar of Voters\u2019 drop boxes around town now, and the first vote centers will open for casting ballots in person on Oct. 24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The four candidates running for the two Orange County Board of Supervisors seats on the November ballot discussed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1400,163,165,164,7,204,100,611,4765,8047,13,77],"class_list":["post-491589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-2026-elections","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-california","tag-election","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orange-county-board-of-supervisors","tag-orange-county-elections","tag-politics","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491589","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=491589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}