OC Board of Supervisor candidates talk priorities, concerns in forum

The four candidates running for the two Orange County Board of Supervisors seats on the November ballot discussed everything on Friday from the role artificial intelligence should play in local government to qualities they would want in a future county CEO.

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They were making their case at a candidate forum hosted by the nonprofit and nonpartisan OC Forum and Orange County Public Affairs Association in Newport Beach.

Fourth District Supervisor Doug Chaffee is termed out, guaranteeing a new representative for the Orange County cities north of Disneyland, excluding Yorba Linda. Board of Education Trustee Tim Shaw and Buena Park Mayor Connor Traut made it out of the June primary to vie for the four-year term this November.

Incumbent Katrina Foley is running for reelection against Assemblymember Diane Dixon to represent the Fifth District coastal communities from Costa Mesa south and sections of inland south OC.

The Board of Supervisors oversees the county’s $9.3 billion budget and 18,000 employees.

The candidates found common ground on several major issues: that artificial intelligence has a place in the inner workings of local government; public safety and affordability as the county’s top priorities; the need for transparent leadership; and that they’d vote “no” against a proposal by the OC Healthcare Agency to increase EMA Specialty designation fees charged to local hospitals from 33% to 40%.

But the harmony stopped there. Candidates were split on how to get the job done.

Foley and Traut made clear their support for a county economic development plan, a tool popular with municipalities, whose framework they said could boost city coffers without raising taxes.

“I think we’re very committed to making sure our emergency reserves and our reserve fund are fully funded. And this is why the economic development plan is critical,” Foley said.

“This is why we need to drive these entitlement projects where our land is sitting in control of private developers who are not building on the land and leaving money on the table,” she added.

Each candidate agreed that AI could be a useful tool for improving county efficiency without having to stretch its finances.

“We’re going to look back at this time as the time that artificial intelligence was really moving,” Shaw said.

“AI will be able to speed up things like permitting and processing, either simple things like writing staff reports, or typing minutes for meetings,” he said, adding, “They might be able to figure out which roads need to be paved soon because of AI.”

Shaw also championed a strong approach to public safety, proposing officers “take all those even seemingly smaller crimes seriously” after delivering an anecdote on his car getting broken into. “You get people, maybe arrested on the small stuff, you can catch them before they’re committing even more serious crimes.”

Candidates generally received warmly the prospect of leaning into technology to address crimes, such as deploying automated license plate readers, cameras and software in unincorporated areas of the county, but varied in their degrees of support.

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“I 100% support it,” Dixon said. “It keeps our community safe. Anyone who is worried about how that affects them, if they don’t commit a crime, they wouldn’t be tracked down by that system.”

Foley said the county has long invested in technology to improve public safety, including its own automated license plate readers and using body-worn cameras.

“We are investing in tools that keep us safe,” she said.

“They use these readers to solve crime,” she said of the automated license plate readers. “And what’s really important is that the county, we have really strict privacy controls in place so that there isn’t an abuse of the system.”

Shaw and Traut also voiced their support, contingent on appropriate guardrails, with Traut saying he “fully opposes sharing of any data to federal immigration enforcement.”

Candidates generally supported outsourcing some county projects and opportunities for public-private partnerships, with Dixon and Shaw saying they support “competition” for projects.

“Public-private partnerships are a way of life in terms of my business history, and then my service on the City Council and the state Assembly, ” said Dixon, a former Newport Beach council member, mentioning the recently opened Witte Hall whose funding was split fifty-fifty between the city and the Library Foundation of Newport Beach. “We have a lot of opportunities in Orange County to have successful public-private partnerships that will benefit the county, benefit the residents and the taxpayers, and help the county achieve greater heights in its projects, because rebuilding competition into the process is a very positive and successful way to go.”

Traut called privatizing the county’s core services “a bad idea.”

“And that’s because you’re lacking that accountability piece and that consistency in long-term structure you have with the county,” he said, emphasizing his disagreement with a decision made last year by supervisors to privatize ambulance services.

Regarding the search for a new county CEO, qualities such as “transparency,” “experience,” “confidence,” and  “integrity” were frequently named.

The Board of Supervisors has been searching for a new CEO for nearly three years since former CEO Frank Kim announced his retirement in 2023 after nine years in the role. Michelle Aguirre filled the seat until earlier this year, having said she was keen to retire before too long. KC Roestenberg was named interim CEO in June.

Shaw said he’d be interested in a CEO with a “formal education” in public administration and experience leading a large organization.

Traut said, “The county CEO should never be elected in the county of Orange.”

“We must not politicize the CEO office, I will oppose it if that tries to make its way with the county,” he said. “The county CEO should not be seen as the sixth supervisor. We need a manager, somebody who is not going to be a yes man to the board.”

Ballots may be returned by mail or to the OC Registrar of Voters’ drop boxes around town now, and the first vote centers will open for casting ballots in person on Oct. 24.

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