OC Political

We are now moving on to the last few days prior to the appointment of a new Orange County Auditor-Controller. Ironically I learned an interesting tidbit of information while I was sitting at the Orange County Registrar of Voters this week about a candidate who was not initially  planning on running for this position. First off, we learned that two applicants Alexander Yu and Nick Pham have withdrawn their applications and thus will not be taking place in an interview. The one thing that strikes me on this office is that we have no political insiders that currently are involved in this process which is a great thing in my opinion.

I have had plenty of time this morning to learn more than I ever wanted to know about the office of the Orange County Auditor-Controller thanks to jury duty. I actually reviewed financials for the office in order to get a picture of what the new person in charge will face upon taking office.

We list the candidates in alphabetical order since I did not see a schedule of interviews posted up on the Orange County Board of Supervisors website. All we know for certain is that interviews will start at :30 and unless I am sitting in a jury box I will be live blogging it.

Here we go:

George Beck- George Beck seems like a nice enough guy who has experience working for the Los Angeles Unified School District. His resume was a bit odd because I did not understand the timing of his jobs held within LAUSD. It might be because he put the years wrong on his resume but it appears he has taken a demotion in 2012 from LAUSD Deputy Branch Director (Finance) to the new designation of Team Member. This is LAUSD we are talking about, so it is possible that they did some kind of organizational realignment that changed the job titles of everybody.

Beck Resume

James Benuzzi- He has his MBA from Chapman University, the next best thing to Cal State Fullerton. I like the fact that he is a City of Orange guy and has years of experience working in the financial industry. He seems to meet the requirements necessary for the position and I have nothing to really fault or praise the guy for in his resume compared to the others.

Benuzzi Resume

Jan Grimes- She is the current acting head of the department and ironically I called her out in an earlier post for simply running as a caretaker, but it appears that she might be getting some pressure to run. While I was at the OC Registrar of Voters this week an individual came in asking questions about how to open up a committee in support of a candidate. This lady mentioned that she wanted to support Jan Grimes for OC Auditor-Controller. I don’t know what will come of this but paperwork was given to this person yesterday and I do not know what will come of this but I am less concerned about Grimes simply running and then leaving an open seat although she is still not my top choice.

Grimes Resume

Gustavo Rodriguez- I do not think he is a registered voter which surprises me that he has made it this far in the process. I also found the degree verification that he submitted with his application a bit puzzling. In terms of the resume itself he has got a pretty solid background in finance and obviously meets the qualifications (other than being a registered voter) necessary to hold this position.

Rodriguez Resume

Eric Woolery- Much like I picked my 2 favorites for Orange County Clerk-Recorder, I am going to do the same here. Eric Woolery is my personal favorite for this seat and he seems to have support from a lot of people on both sides of the aisle and of all different political factions. I do recall that he used to be a member of the Orange County Board of Education but this predates my time in OC politics. His resume appears to be very strong on the finance side and would be a solid choice for the Supervisors to make for this seat.

Woolery Resume

I don’t know what most of our readers spent this morning doing, but I had the fun task of reading the  Orange County Fiscal Year 2012-2013 Second Quarter Budget Report. Interestingly it appears that the new Auditor-controller will have some issues upon taking office. The following were two issues that stood out to me about the current status of the office.

1) Based on what I read it appears that the office of OC Auditor-Controller currently faces a $535,074 deficit for the previous fiscal year based on what I read. Remember, I m not an accountant but this is a bit bothersome for an agency that should be in the black. I will post the scanned image of this when I am done with jury duty later today.

2)This deficit comes despite being understaffed by 2.54% based on a later page in the document which I will also scan later. This was the best explanation that I originally had for the deficit, being that salaries/benefits often cause the most problems when it comes to budgeting. I hope the Supervisors ask about this in the interviews on Tuesday.