Orange County Supervisors are calling an emergency meeting for the board managing the county’s health plan for the poor to discuss how they might soon lose their seats on it as Assemblyman Avelino Valencia pushes his bill that would remove them.
Currently, two county supervisors serve on CalOptima’s nine person board, overseeing a $4.7 billion budget that provides health insurance for roughly one third of the county.
Valencia’s state bill is looking to replace county supervisors with the directors of the Orange County’s Health Care Agency and Social Services Agency instead and require a series of medical experts fill the board’s nine seats.
He’s also asking to make changes on how the other board members are selected by setting up a new committee that would pick and choose members, which would include a state Senator, Assembly Member and Congressman with the most Medi-Cal beneficiaries in Orange County, along with other hospital, insurance and legal providers.
To read the full text of the bill, click here.
“The bill would establish a selection committee and require that members of the governing body be nominated and selected by the selection committee,” reads Assembly Bill 2194, Valencia’s bill.
When the bill was first introduced in February, it made no mention about removing county supervisors, but Valencia changed it to compel their removal on Monday.
Valencia did not respond to requests for comment.
The bill was approved by the state assembly before the revisions, and is next set to be debated by the state senate Health Committee.
In a Wednesday interview, Supervisor and CalOptima Board Chair Vicente Sarmiento called the shift “suspicious,” adding it could be “a big loss” and “disruptive.”
He questioned why Valencia would take a bill that was originally backed by the county and completely rewrite it.
“There doesn’t seem to be any sort of reasonable rationale that’s being offered for this basically gut and amend that is happening to this bill that we introduced with the assemblymember,” Sarmiento said, noting that it would make CalOptima the only plan like it in the state without a supervisor on the board.
The original text of the bill called for staggered board member terms and increased transparency.
“This could be a very disruptive change to a board that has had its hands full becoming more transparent and more responsive to its members,” Sarmiento said. “That removes local control, that removes accountability from the residents.”
Supervisor Janet Nguyen, who also holds a board seat, did not respond to requests for comment.
The CalOptima board meeting will be at 2 p.m. Thursday afternoon at CalOptima’s headquarters in Orange, with only one item up for discussion – whether or not to endorse the bill.
To view the meeting’s agenda, click here.
Sarmiento also said he’d be asking supervisors to consider discussing the issue as well at their meeting next Tuesday.
The proposal comes after years of controversy around county supervisors serving on the board, including Andrew Do, who later pleaded guilty to accepting bribes, stealing money from the county and is currently serving a five year prison sentence for a bribery scheme stemming from federal COVID bailout money.
[Read: Former OC Supervisor Sentenced to 5 Years in Federal Prison in Bribery Scheme]
Do resigned his CalOptima seat in 2022 on the board amidst a state audit over executive pay hikes and other hiring practices that raised questions over a program he was involved with.
[Read: Top Official Resigns From OC’s Health Plan for the Poor Following Revelations of State Probe]
That same year, he was fined $12,000 by state regulators for trying to steer public lobbying contracts at CalOptima to his campaign donors.
[Read: Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do Faces $12,000 State Fine Over ‘Pay to Play’ Politics]
While Nguyen only rejoined CalOptima’s board in February of this year, she previously chaired the board and faced a grand jury investigation and questions over her role there as well.
In a 2013 report titled “CalOptima Burns While Majority of Supervisors Fiddle,” grand jurors laid out how Nguyen’s arrival at the agency was “disruptive and created an atmosphere that according to current and former CalOptima employees is ‘unsafe for senior executives.’”
To read that report, click here.
[Read: OC Grand Jury Issues Scathing Report on CalOptima]
She also faced questions at the time from her fellow supervisors and former CalOptima board members about her control of the agency.
[Read: Nguyen Harshly Criticized by Colleagues Over CalOptima Audit]]
When asked about that history, Sarmiento didn’t speak to Nguyen’s time on the board, but pointed to a series of reforms made after Do’s bribery charges became public, including disclosure of family ties to contractors.
“I’m not sure if we can cry and say ‘here we go again’ because we’ve actually done the opposite,” Sarmiento said. “I’m very proud of the work the present board of directors has done.”
