Privatizing Environmental Management Agency Studied

A team of Orange County officials has been formed to evaluate four proposals aimed at privatizing the Environmental Management Agency, county officials said Tuesday.

The county is looking at the proposals to determine whether EMA’s functions can be performed cheaper and more efficiently by a consortium of private companies.

The team, which is composed of private sector executives, members of the county’s privatization task force and county staff, will submit its recommendations next week to the county’s top executive.

County supervisors are scheduled to discuss the EMA privatization issue at their June 20 meeting.

“I am confident that we will be able to complete the review process and address the policy and legal issues associated with the privatization concept within the deadlines established” by the Board of Supervisors, County Chief Executive Officer William J. Popejoy said.

Popejoy said he has also asked EMA Director Michael M. Ruane to “prepare a report which outlines the options available to the board on this issue.”

The county had received five proposals when the bidding process closed Monday. One of the proposals already has been declared non-responsive and will be eliminated from consideration, county officials said.

“Given the amount of interest we’d seen, I think it’s a lot fewer than we expected,” Ruane said.

The plan to privatize EMA has been pushed by Supervisor Roger R. Stanton and has drawn criticism from labor leaders, small-business owners and members of a committee formed by the board to explore the concept, who said it could violate state law and prompt a slew of lawsuits.

Some critics also have complained that the bidding process was too restrictive because it sought proposals only to privatize the entire agency instead of opening it up to smaller firms that might be able to perform smaller functions in the agency.

The agency performs a number of vital county services, including land management, overseeing low-income housing efforts and running the county’s harbors, beaches and parks. It is involved in flood control, land use authorizations and environmental planning.

County officials also are planning to merge the functions of Integrated Waste Management into EMA.

Stanton has said privatizing EMA could save money, eliminate county jobs and become a model for privatizing other county agencies, such as the General Services Agency.

Some critics, however, say that EMA is an unusual starting point for the county’s privatization effort because the agency is nearly 70% privatized already and receives very little county money.