Supervisors Vote Quick $33 Million, Fret Over $792,350

The Orange County Board of Supervisors authorized spending $33 million for several projects in just seconds Tuesday. Approval for another $792,350 took an hour, a lot of wrangling and a 3-2 vote.

The contentious item was the lease and eventual purchase of a document storage and retrieval system for County Assessor Bradley L. Jacobs’ office. It pitted an elected assessor against elected supervisors, who accused him of bypassing county procedures to obtain his new equipment.

“It’s obvious that we are at the end of the fiscal year,” Board Chairman Roger R. Stanton said, reviewing the 172 items on the supervisors’ agenda, nearly triple the normal number.

Most of the items were requests from county departments and agencies to spend money in the fiscal year starting July 1.

First $33 Million Is the Easiest

With one motion and no discussion, the supervisors authorized programs ranging from $600 yearly to each of two families near John Wayne Airport who let the county install noise meters on their property to $1.9 million to resurface streets in the county. The total came to $33.149 million, virtually all of it to continue existing programs and the bulk of the money coming from the state and federal governments.

But the item that caused the clash was Jacobs’ request for the $792,350, plus interest to be determined later, to lease-purchase a document storage and retrieval system.

Jacobs did not follow the usual county procedure of seeking bids from competing firms, contending that only Filenet Corp. makes a proven system in wide use.

Jacobs said the system would pay for itself by reducing the number of clerks needed in his office. The machine Jacobs wants scans documents and converts the images to digits which are stored on computer disks. The originals can be tossed away or stored, and clerks can call up what they want on the computer, rather than chasing through storage rooms for the originals.

Wieder Miffed

Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder complained that Jacobs knew six months ago that he would need the system and questioned why he did not discuss it with other county officials.

“I’m particularly concerned because this is another example of administrative management being taken away from the Board of Supervisors by an elected official,” Wieder declared.

She said the supervisors’ only control over other elected officials in the county is the power of the purse and, referring to the single company considered for the contract, added: “I don’t like the precedent this establishes.”

Ronald S. Rubino of the county General Services Agency said the system was recommended for purchase in the county budget for the year starting July 1; he added that the purchase could wait until budget hearings begin in six weeks. He said that by then, other companies might have improved their systems.

Jacobs said the system would be of benefit to the county and its taxpayers, and wondered whether the county was “enslaved by particular procedures,” a remark that drew retorts from Wieder, Stanton and Supervisors Gaddi H. Vasquez and Thomas F. Riley.

Jacobs said it was not until he saw a May demonstration of a bank-owned Filenet system that he realized that it was what he needed for his office to help handle the more than 400,000 new pieces of paper that accrue each year.

County Administrative Officer Larry Parrish said that Jacobs “is the most exasperating person to help” because he bypasses normal supervisors’ policy and added that some assessor’s staff members are viewed by other county employees as “arrogant.”

Good for All?

Still, Parrish said, “it’s a good system, he needs it, it’ll give us the (assessor’s) roll, it’ll bring in revenue by the county.”

Updated assessment rolls allow the county to quickly determine residents’ tax bills. They are especially important in registering a change in ownership of a house and in levying the proper tax on the new owner.

In the end, Riley “reluctantly” joined Stanton and Supervisor Don R. Roth in approving the expenditure, with Wieder and Vasquez voting no.