O.C. Buys Sheriff’s Dept. Legal Aid

Orange County supervisors on Tuesday approved a $100,000 contract for an outside legal firm to help the Sheriff’s Department on personnel matters.

County Counsel Benjamin P. de Mayo assured supervisors that the firm, Jones & Mayer of Fullerton, would not be assisting Sheriff Michael S. Carona in dealing with controversies in the sheriff’s reserve program.

And Carona himself further assured the supervisors that the unspecified personnel matters were none that involved him. Other controversies linked to him have included the indictment of a former assistant sheriff and a captain, and accusations by two women that he sexually harassed them.

During the summer, the board denied a similar request by Carona to hire the same law firm to help him reinstate, on the California peace officer database, the names of 56 reserve deputies whose credentials were challenged in a dispute with a state commission.

The commission removed the deputies -- many of them friends and political donors to Carona -- when it learned that background investigations and training for some of the officers were not completed.

De Mayo said he would closely monitor billings from the law firm and report his findings to the board.

In other business, the county will seek a rehearing before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Two weeks ago, the court ruled that a 2003 election resulting in the recall of Santa Ana schools Trustee Nativo V. Lopez was improperly conducted because recall petitions should have been circulated in Spanish in addition to English.

Although the election result will stand, the decision left unclear whether the county, a defendant in the case, must print future petitions in Spanish.

The court cited the federal Voting Rights Act, saying petitions should have used both languages because of the many Spanish-speaking voters in the school district.