ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Here’s to a New Recorder

If any office in Orange County government could use a morale-boosting party, it is the recorder’s office. And if last year’s New Year’s Eve celebration included champagne toasts to better times ahead, that was understandable. Still, the party, minor affair that it was, only served to reinforce doubts about the independence of the office.

After all, the champagne and refreshments were paid for by title companies, according to office employees. The title firms, which depend on the recorder’s office to register real estate deeds and other business transactions, apparently have financed the end-of-year party for the last several years. We hate to be party poopers, but this should stop; county employees should buy their own bubbly.

The Board of Supervisors adopted a tough gift ban and a wide-ranging ethics code last year. The reforms were needed after years of too close relationships between public officials and those doing business with the county.

Two weeks before the recorder’s office party, a memo from the county counsel warned of a ban on gifts from companies or individuals with business before the county in the past year. Assistant Recorder Ella Murphy said she thought that the gift of the champagne was OK because the office staff, not just top administrators, received it. She would have been better off turning it down. (Another allegation being investigated by county officials was that minors were served champagne at the party.)

As for the titular head of the office, Recorder Lee A. Branch, he said there was nothing he could do to call off the party because the Board of Supervisors had limited his powers. The supervisors trimmed his sails because he had mismanaged the office for years. In January the board publicly censured Branch, an unprecedented move, after investigators found his romance with, and favored treatment of, an office employee had devastated morale. Branch’s inability to run the office is one more reason the county needs a fresh start in November’s runoff election. Start the new year with a new recorder, not to mention self-financing of the party.