Good grief. Again.

OC Supervisors Move to Take Away Independent Oversight
(Voice of OC)

     Orange County supervisors moved Tuesday to remove independent oversight of their actions, county finances, and the practices of the Sheriff’s Department and District Attorney’s Office.
     The most significant of the supervisors’ actions came at the suggestion of Supervisor Shawn Nelson. He and three other supervisors voted to prepare actions taking away the auditing and financial control functions of the office of elected county Auditor-Controller Eric Woolery, and to instead have those staff report to the supervisors and county CEO Frank Kim, who also reports to the supervisors.
     The move is scheduled for another vote by supervisors June 26 to implement it. Supervisor Todd Spitzer abstained.
     Woolery’s office is in charge of auditing county departments and controlling when payments of county funds are made or not made.

     The auditor-controller is independently elected by county voters, and Woolery won re-election last week with about 75 percent of the vote. But he has repeatedly drawn the ire of Nelson and other county supervisors since he took office in early 2015, including his questioning of the legality of supervisors’ taxpayer funded mailers to voters that prominently feature the supervisors.
     A second action by supervisors eliminates all funding for the county’s Office of Independent Review, which is tasked with monitoring liability issues from any potentially problematic practices within the Sheriff’s Department, DA’s office and other county law enforcement agencies.
     That action came weeks after the supervisors hired a new head of the office, Kevin Rogan, who started work in April after supervisors left the office vacant for two years….

     SEE 

Beauteous OC, Land o' Abiding Corruption, DtB

Why Did More Than 85,000 People Vote to Hand Over the County Clerk-Recorder Job to a Convicted Ketchup-Bottle Thief?
(OC Weekly)

     On June 5, the voters of Orange County collectively voted to give another four years in office to incumbent OC Clerk-Recorder Hugh Nguyen. In 2014, after winning his first race, Nguyen became the nation’s first Vietnamese-American clerk-recorder in U.S. history. A moderate Republican, he extended his department’s operating hours to include one Saturday per month—thus making it easier for working people to access the agency’s services—and also supervised the department’s successful digitization of records, thus vastly speeding up the agency’s recording process.
     Clearly, Nguyen, who took in 79.3 percent of the votes, was the best man for the job, and he won in a landslide. But sadly, that’s not the big headline coming out of the 2018 Orange County Clerk-Recorder’s race. Instead, it’s this: For some reason, 20.7 percent of voters chose a rival candidate, Steve Rocco, a man whose chief mission in life is spewing conspiracy theories involving global domination, a grocery-store chain, a brand of breakfast sausages, and the Kodak Film Co.
. . .
     In the chaotic wake of numerous OUSD meetings during which Rocco refused to vote on any matters and used his time to harangue fellow board members, a group of concerned parents rallied to recall Rocco. But this effort sadly failed to garner enough public support. So the school board voted to censure Rocco, causing him to sue the school district, thus wasting hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars. After he failed to win a Santa Ana City Council seat, Rocco went dark for a while.
     Then, on Sept. 29, 2008, campus security at Chapman University arrested Rocco for stealing a half-empty bottle of ketchup from a cafeteria.
. . .
     Nguyen, who beat Rocco handily this year, says he was mystified as to how Rocco won so many votes. He said he considered challenging Rocco’s ballot statement, but he ultimately decided against it. “I didn’t want to make a big stink and give him media time,” he explained. “It’s kind of sad that so many people voted for him because people always complain about folks who are elected and don’t do their job. I love what I do and will continue to work harder. That’s why I got 250,000 votes.”….

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OC: land of corruption (even without Tom's help), DtB
Rocco v. Williams; instant carnival!, DtB