Time to Move On

The causes of Orange County’s bankruptcy have been probed deeply over the last two years, but even with all that is now understood about what happened, some bitterness lingers in high places. That’s too bad for the county, because the inability to put the problem behind us involves more than bruised egos; it involves the expenditure of public money as finger-pointing continues.

Two weeks after the 4th District Court of Appeal threw out the civil case brought by Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi against Supervisor William G. Steiner and board Chairman Roger R. Stanton, the supervisors approved an audit of Capizzi’s office. This came despite the fact that the board last August had approved a similar grand jury study.

Steiner explained away the overlap by saying that the new audit would focus on the allocation of resources, while the Price Waterhouse inquiry authorized by the grand jury would examine organizational structure and performance compared to other counties.

Even if that’s true, it’s really putting the district attorney’s office under a microscope. Supervisor Jim Silva, the one board member to vote against the audit, had it right when he said the board should have waited for the results of the $86,000 grand jury audit before proceeding with the latest venture.

The obvious question, especially given Stanton’s lashing out at Capizzi’s office, was whether this was simply an exercise in vengeance, exacted on public time and distracting from other business. There is also the separate matter of Capizzi’s own political ambitions and recent confirmation that he has begun raising money to run for state attorney general. These ambitions, expressed in his formation of a campaign committee, have run afoul of the Republican hierarchy in Orange County for his unsuccessful prosecutions of Steiner and Stanton and of pending campaign finance fraud charges against Assemblyman Scott Baugh of Huntington Beach.

Capizzi would be wise at this point to think long and hard before pushing forward with an appeal to the California Supreme Court. It may be tempting for him to try and make political hay by capitalizing further on bankruptcy prosecution. But at this point, there seems to be little to gain other than political points.

Taken together, we have two hard-headed approaches. If you take the $2.5-million figure spent to prosecute officials that Capizzi gave during consultations with the supervisors earlier this month, and add to it the more than $2 million taxpayers have spent on the defense for officials, the county has paid some $4.5 million to chase its own tail.

At some point, we have to wonder where it all ends. It’s time to move on.