Gift to Agency Follows Bid to Privatize It

Three weeks after a failed attempt by the Board of Supervisors to privatize the Orange County Human Relations Commission, the agency’s private, nonprofit arm announced Monday a $10,000 donation from a health services company.

“This is a representative example of the very successful fund-raising events they’ve had,” said Steve Franks, spokesman for Supervisor Jim Silva, who led the privatization attempt. Franks said Silva’s proposal was made in part because of the private unit’s fund-raising record: “They’ve been very successful on the nonprofit side.”

The donation, by PacifiCare Health Systems Inc. to the Orange County Human Relations Council, will help fund the Bridges Program, an inter-ethnic project at more than 45 public schools countywide. “PacifiCare obviously invests in their community,” said council spokeswoman Peggy Calvert, “and we are happy that they gave us this vote of confidence by investing in our program.”

Bill Wood, president of the PacifiCare Foundation and a member of the Human Relations Council’s board of directors, could not be reached for comment. In a council press release, he was quoted: “We believe strongly in giving back to the communities we serve. We are pleased to support such a worthwhile organization as the Orange County Human Relations Council.”

Under Silva’s plan, which supervisors rejected 3 to 2, the county’s allocation of more than $240,000 a year to the Human Relations Commission would have been discontinued or channeled to a newly privatized nonprofit commission.

“I believe it’s an outstanding program,” Silva said during a hearing on the matter. “But the cities need to be paying into it too, and the county should completely privatize the commission so it can be 100% on its own.”

The commission’s operating costs are $390,477 a year, about 63% of which comes from the county. The nonprofit Human Relations Council, on the other hand, managed last year to raise about $2 million from corporations, foundations and other sources.

Franks, speaking for Silva, vowed Monday to continue the drive for privatization.