Grand Jury Asked to Probe Irvine Fire Spending

Assemblyman Ken Maddox has asked the Orange County grand jury to examine whether more than $1 million earmarked for fire protection in Irvine was improperly spent for tree trimming, fire-station landscaping and other expenses.

In a letter sent Monday, Maddox (R-Garden Grove) also asked jury Foreman Joseph Gatlin to review the authority’s governance structure. Last month, Maddox suggested streamlining the 23-member board to five members, contending the current structure is unwieldy and unresponsive.

The Irvine projects were funded from $1.9 million given by the authority to the city for this fiscal year. The money is a portion of $3.4 million due to Irvine from excess city property taxes that, by state law, must be used for fire protection.

“Everybody would like to have more employees to process building permits and their trees trimmed, but I question whether it has to come from fire funds,” Maddox said Tuesday.

“I guess it’s the egalitarian in me,” he said, saying he wonders if people in affluent and not as affluent areas are being treated in similar manners “or why people in Stanton don’t get fire money to trim their trees.”

Maddox’s request for a grand jury investigation caught Fire Authority officials by surprise.

“We’re not aware he made that request,” Battalion Chief Scott Brown said. “Certainly we’re more than willing and able to meet any request from the grand jury.”

As the authority’s largest financial donor among 21 cities, Irvine routinely contributes more each year than it receives in fire services. The city’s excess payments are used to subsidize other cities that don’t pay for fire services from property taxes but from the general fund. In the past, the excess money wasn’t available to Irvine for other uses.

In 1999, the authority devised a system to compensate Irvine and, to a far lesser degree, five other cities and the county, which also pay more than they receive in services. The system allowed Irvine to recoup some of its excess tax money for special fire-related projects.

According to Maddox, that represented a Faustian bargain as a way of keeping most of Irvine’s extra funds--in excess of $7 million this past fiscal year--within the authority to help other cash-strapped cities.

“When you sign up for a regional system, you sign up for the good and the bad,” he said. “If Irvine didn’t want to pay into the system, they should start their own fire department. But don’t join and then use extortion through governance to extract $3.4 million that could be used for other cities. We could enhance fire protection in a lot of communities for $3.4 million.”

Brown said the policy was approved by the authority’s board of directors as a “fair and good business decision.” He said the city’s one-time projects must be used for fire prevention or emergency and disaster preparedness.