Waste of the Day: $275,000 Not To Work In Orange County

Topline: The supervisor of Orange County, California used his office to get his personal friend a no-show job at a local nonprofit, signing a $275,000 taxpayer-funded contract to do so, a county spokesperson told LAist.

How the Orange County Supervisor got his friend on the payroll

Key facts: County Supervisor Andrew Do’s administration awarded the contract to Mind OC, a mental health advocacy group, in 2020.

Do allegedly told the nonprofit to hire Josie Batres to carry out the work, the wife of Do’s chief of staff Chris Wangsaporn. The work was never completed, according to multiple sources interviewed by LAist. It’s unclear how much of the $275,000 wound up in Bartres’ pockets.

Contracts in Orange County are supposed to be approved in a public vote by the Board of Supervisors, but the rules were suspended under “emergency” procedures during the pandemic.

That allowed Clayton Chau, then-director of the county’s Health Care Agency, to give Mind OC the contract through a no-bid process.

Anonymous sources told LAist that Supervisor Do was the one that chose Mind OC and told them to hire Batres, though Chau said he could not recall anything about the contract.

The contract instructed Mind OC to hold “community listening sessions” among groups “reflecting the social, economic, demographic, and geographic diversity in Orange County.” Officials would use the sessions to learn how to better provide access to mental health services.

The Supervisor himself raked it in

Background: Supervisor Do received a $199,000 salary last year, according to OpenTheBooks.com. Wangsaporn made $180,000.

The money for the fishy contract came from the Mental Health Services Act, a tax approved by voters in 2004.

Funded by a 1% tax on those with over $1 million in income, the County expects to spend an estimated $1.1 billion through the program in the three-year period from 2023 to 2025.

Search all federal, state and local government salaries and vendor spending with the AI search bot, Benjamin, at OpenTheBooks.com.

Summary: In some ways, Mind OC is fulfilling the terms of its contract. There’s likely nothing easier on one’s mental health than a well-paid job with no actual responsibilities.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.

This article was originally published by RCI and made available via RealClearWire.