Orange County Grand Jury
• 2008-2009
• Agency Response
Response to:
Orange Santa Margarita Water District
Hoard of Directcrs Betty h. Olson. Ph.c;' Charls'<'~~i.son Saunc)pa F. !acoss Bill Lawson . . Roger Faubel John J*
⚠️ Translation Notice: This content has been automatically translated. The original English text is the official version. Translation may contain errors.
⚠️ Este contenido ha sido traducido automáticamente. El texto original en inglés es la versión oficial. La traducción puede contener errores.
Findings and Recommendations 7 findings
F1
Selection of Professional Consultants", adopted in 1993, clearly states the procedure for the selection of professional consultants, including for purposes of avoiding the perception of, or actual, bias.
Related Recommendations (1)
R1
This Recommendation has been implemented. The District's "Code of Conduct And Expense Reimbursement Policy" explicitly prohibits its public officials from entering into consulting work for consideration with any persons doing business with the District. The District does not have any "member agencies", so this recommendation appears to be directed to the Municipal Water District of Orange County and/or Orange County Water District. In 1993, the District adopted its "Policy for the Selection of Professional" Consultants" which comprehensively addresses the selection of professional consultants.
F2
The District wholly disagrees with this Finding. The District's "Code of Conduct And Expense Reimbursement Policy", originally adopted in 1993, incorporates ethics provisions pursuant to AB 1234, including but not limited to regular ethics training. There have been no allegations or instances of District Board members engaging in this type of conduct.
Related Recommendations (1)
R2
This Recommendation has been implemented. The District's "Code of Conduct And Expense Reimbursement Policy" fully addresses ethics standards, includes regular ethics training pursuant to AB 1234 and enforcement monitoring.
F3
The District wholly disagrees with this Finding. The District's "Code of Conduct And Expense Reimbursement Policy", originally adopted in 1993, is very comprehensive and includes provisions exceeding the requirements of the Political Reform Act of 1974 and other laws and regulations governing conflicts of interest.
Related Recommendations (1)
R3
This Recommendation has been implemented. See response for Finding F.4.
F4
The District wholly disagrees with this Finding. The District conducts three Board meetings per month; two in the morning prior to typical business hours for members of the public who may wish to attend prior to beginning work, and one in the evening two hours after the typical business day ends.
Related Recommendations (1)
R4
This Recommendation will not be implemented. Voters within the District have not expressed a desire or support for conducting special elections in the case of vacancies. In such event, to the extent the District is requested to adopt a policy requiring elections in most circumstances, it will evaluate the propriety of a policy, to include balancing public policy goals and costs to ratepayers.
F5
The District wholly disagrees with this Finding. No basis or benchmark is provided for what constitutes "an unusually high percentage". In the 1990s, all of the District's Directors were originally elected. The District wholly disagrees with this Finding. None of the District's Directors
Related Recommendations (1)
R5
This Recommendation will not be implemented. District Directors have not held other public offices and would voluntarily disclose any other public offices they may hold without the necessity of formal requirements. If Directors sought such other public offices, they may be precluded from holding multiple offices under incompatibility of public office laws.
F6
hold multiple elected positions.
Related Recommendations (1)
R6
requested or proposed term limits. The unsubstantiated premise that periodically mandating new Directors is ipso facto beneficial to utility customers, rather than relying on voters to voluntarily make that determination based on the relative merit of candidates, is speculative at best.
F7
The District agrees with this Finding. This response is limited to the District. No survey or study has been undertaken with respect to determining if any water district board in Orange County has imposed or is required by a local measure to limit the terms of directors. i Recommendations
No recommendations for this finding
* This report's PDF did not contain easily extractable text and required Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for analysis. There may be minor errors in the extracted findings and recommendations due to OCR limitations with scanned documents.