Norby stands up to Carona

I’ve always been a big fan of Orange County Supervisor Chris Norby – now more than ever. Norby stepped up to the plate and chaired today’s OC Board of Supervisors’ meeting, with BOS Chairman Bill Campbell out of town. In the process Norby was given the chance to oppose OC Sheriff Mike Carona’s ridiculous request for close to $400,000, to conduct a self-glorifying poll utilizing Prop. 172 funds.

Suffice to say, Carona was none too pleased about Norby’s opposition.

According to an OC Register online article, Carona had this to say about Norby, “The silly part about this is we spent more staff time trying to educate Mr. Norby, and clearly, he’s incapable of being educated.” Excuse me – I wonder if he meant to say that Carona can’t be bought off, or pressured, unlike his peers on the BOS, Jim Silva and Tom Wilson? Both of them buckled and voted for Carona to get the money – and surprise – Lou Correa joined with Norby in opposing Carona.

Both Carona and Norby endorsed Carona in the June primary – but clearly they are not going to be, “rubber stamps,” as Norby put it in today’s meeting.

Norby took a much tougher stance against Carona’s request, as compared to Correa, who merely tried to limit the request to a one-year extension.

Arguments against the request included: 1) Public safety tax funds should not be spent in this manner; 2) Carona is conducting campaign-related activities with public dollars; and, 3) the questions in the public section of the poll were just too broad to be useful.

Unfortunately, the matter was not resolved today. Carona can bring it back to the BOS as early as their August 1 meeting. Carona says he will be back.

In a few weeks, we will be able to comment on the August 1 meeting agenda when it is posted to this link. We should also take the time to send letters or emails to Chris Norby and Lou Correa, thanking them for standing up to Carona. We also need to let Carona what we think of his request. You can email his communications department at this link. I could not find Carona’s email address on his website, which figures. No wonder Carona thinks he has to pay a consultant to find out what we think about him – we can’t email him directly.

Lastly, time to let Silva and Wilson have it – please do not let them get away with today’s stupid votes. I warned you all about Silva – but the OC GOP machine still got behind him over the far more ethical and independent Cypress Council Member Mike McGill. Can you only imagine what Silva is going to do once he gets to Sacramento?

We should also start sending our comments to Campbell. Absent public pressure he is likely to go along with Silva and Wilson.

UPDATE – the LA Times has now weighed in on this story too, at this link. Here is what they had to say about Tim Whitacre’s comments to the Supervisors, “Tim Whitacre, a critic of Carona’s who campaigned for challenger Bill Hunt in last month’s election, urged supervisors to have the “intestinal fortitude” to reject the contract. “There is no excuse for you guys to be rolling over every time [the sheriff] comes before you,” he said. “Let him pay for his own polling from his own campaign funds.”

OC Register columnist Steven Greenhut has also put in his two cent’s worth about Carona, at this link. Here’s just some of what Greenhut has to say about Carona, “The sheriff thinks, apparently, that the board should rubber stamp all his expenditures. He thinks it’s beyond the pale for anyone to question his decisions. Given the allegations of misbehavior in the department, the latest unanswered jail death, the retaliation against members of his department who did not support him in his re-election bid, the sheriff definitely needs more oversight, not less.”


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"Admin" is just editors Vern Nelson, Greg Diamond, or Ryan Cantor sharing something that they mostly didn't write themselves, but think you should see. Before December 2010, "Admin" may have been former blog owner Art Pedroza.