OC grand jury to John Williams: you stink

Looks like we missed one.

A reader alerted us to a story concerning trustee John Williams. Williams, of course, is also the Orange County Public Administrator-Public Guardian, having been elected for that office in 2002.

On Wednesday, the OC Reg reported that, according to an OC grand jury, Williams is doing a seriously shitty and questionable job. (Grand jury faults public guardian office for mismanagement.)

According to the Reg, back in 2005, Williams and then-Treasurer John Moorlach promised that they could save the county $300K in three years by combining the public administrator and public guardian offices. Well, it's 2009, and, according to the grand jury, nothing of the kind has happened.

Their report, made available on Wednesday,

takes aim at Williams for doubling salary costs at the agency and engaging in questionable personnel practices. ¶ "The annual base salary of management has increased over 96 percent since 2005," read the grand jury report. ¶ "They have failed to deliver on their promise to save Orange County taxpayers' money."
…
The Public Administrator is an elected job which pays less than $20,000 a year. But the Public Guardian is an appointed position earning similar wages to other department heads at more than $138,000 annually. Under state law, the public administrator in each county settles the estates of the recently deceased who leave no known heirs....

According to the report, in 2005 there were seven employees who had combined yearly salaries of $529,796. By 2008, the number of employees had risen to 10, a spike of 40 percent. And their wages totaled $1, 042,828 annually.

The spike is not only attributable to extra employees but to numerous questionable promotions. ¶ Grand jurors found that one employee was promoted to a top management position within a year of retirement.

Apparently, that wasn’t the only promotion that was hinky. Several of them were called into question by the county’s human resources people.

Even Moorlach thinks the report is troubling. He was scheduled to meet with Williams (yesterday).

Apart from all that, the grand jury just thinks that the agency does a lousy job.

The report cited one audit by social security administration that found a 30 percent error rate in files handled by the public guardian. ¶ Another example cited was the case of one individual who left behind $7,400 after passing away. The public administrator took four years to bring the case before a court for disbursement and by that time the funds were depleted.

It gets worse:

Grand jurors also criticized the use of internal manuals saying many were not up to date and were "in shambles." ¶ "Four organizational charts were provided to the Grand Jury over a period of four months. These charts were different each time they were produced and the titles of the individuals were constantly changing." ¶ "Out of control personnel practices have created an organization top heavy in management and riddled with unhappy workers required to do much more work than what is considered typical," the report concluded.

That does sound like our Johnny.

For some background on John Williams' "public administrator" gig (and his spendthrift ways), go to
• Williams fires Padberg.
• $500 a night lodging for Orlando Boy

Speaking of dope...Matt Coker (OC Weekly) alerts us to a video on YouTube. Conservative OC judge Jim Gray argues for marijuana decriminalization (lengthy):