Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Friday, Jan 6, the Feast of the Epiphany in the Christian world — or as we say it in Spanish, El Día de los Reyes Magos (Three Kings Day). I’m Gustavo Arellano, reporting from Orange County. I’m also a Metro columnist, which means I’m allowed to have opinions. Like:
The Orange County Hall of Administration in Santa Ana deserved a better fate.
The longtime seat for the County of Orange, the government entity in charge of the O.C.’s unincorporated areas, opened in 1978 at a cost of $8.1 million and is currently getting demolished. It is the latest structure to go down in the Orange County Civic Center. The area is home to many of the county’s departments, including the Health Care Agency, Orange County Superior Court, the Sheriff-Coroner, District Attorney, and County Procurement, whatever that is.
Those all have their own buildings. But at the Hall of Administration, the spotlight was on the five people who made up the Board of Supervisors. Oh, if those walls could talk. …
In just the first few years after the Hall of Administration opened:
- One former supervisor, Robert Battin, emerged from a jail sentence for misusing county staff for a failed lieutenant governor run.
- Another supe (Ralph Diedrich) got charged with bribery and conspiracy charges.
- A third (Philip L. Anthony) pleaded no contest to receiving laundered money for his election campaign.
Their shenanigans ensured that the Board of Supervisors wouldn’t be majority Democrat again until this year.
All that corruption was just a prelude to decades of drama. There was the 1994 bankruptcy, at that point the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. Then there was the dilution of the board’s powers as more unincorporated areas became cities. If the nickname for the L.A. County Board of Supervisors was historically the “five little kings,” the O.C. supes are nowadays more like five Little Lord Fauntleroys. A small…