An Orange County supervisor is pushing forward with calls to dig deeper into how his colleague, Supervisor Andrew Do, routed millions of county dollars into a nonprofit overseen by Do’s 22-year-old daughter — without disclosing the family connection.
During the county supervisors’ meeting Tuesday, Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento noted his previous call for a review of the county’s funding of Viet America Society, which was first reported by LAist last month.
Timeline requested
“There is additional information that needs to be understood. I think that the public and members of this board need to understand it as well,” Sarmiento said at Tuesday’s meeting. He asked county CEO Frank Kim to develop a timeline of the funding.
“I think it's something that we all need to make sure that we at least — whether we individually understand [as supervisors] or we're able to share with the public — I think it's something that I'd like to have some, some response on,” Sarmiento said.
Kim responded that he’d be happy to put together a timeline and present it to Sarmiento and any other supervisors who are interested.
Kim noted staff have been reviewing the documents because of public records requests they’ve been receiving. LAist has been requesting contract and payment records around the nonprofit group over the last several weeks.
Do did not speak about the issue at Tuesday’s meeting, and hasn’t responded to multiple requests for comment from LAist about his role in directing millions in pandemic relief funds earmarked to feed struggling seniors to his daughter’s group.
LAist’s latest article, published Monday afternoon, reported that the nonprofit run by Do’s daughter, Rhiannon, failed to submit federally-required audits detailing how it spent the money. Sarmiento said he’s concerned about the missing audits LAist discovered.
A preliminary review by the county’s attorneys has not found anything illegal, Sarmiento said at Tuesday’s meeting.
But, Sarmiento said, “even if something is not legally incorrect doesn't make it ethically correct.”
The county’s top lawyer, Leon Page, declined to comment on whether the county had a duty to ensure the nonprofit submitted its required audits. Federal officials told LAist that the county did have that responsibility.
Ethics reform vote is delayed by a month
In response to LAist’s reporting, Sarmiento proposed a series of ethics reforms, which were initially scheduled to be up for approval Tuesday.
His proposal would require disclosure of supervisors’ family connections before votes, and boost public transparency about the dollars supervisors divvy up in their districts.
The county’s practice has been to let supervisors award multimillion-dollar contracts without public disclosure at meetings. Sarmiento’s proposal, if approved, would require a quarterly log of who’s getting those contracts.
The reforms were scheduled for a vote on Tuesday, and have had public support from Sarmiento and Supervisor Katrina Foley. They’re the two supervisors who have raised public concerns about Do’s actions.
Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, Sarmiento said he was delaying the reform vote to Jan. 23, to give time to adjust the proposal based on concerns raised by Kim and Supervisor Don Wagner.
Sarmiento said he remains committed to the core reforms.
“It's such an important item that I want to make sure that we get this right,” he said. “This is something that's not being tabled, this is something that's simply being [postponed].”
Sarmiento has said his reform proposal is partly in response to LAist’s reporting on Do.
'The public's trust is being eroded'
“The public's trust is being eroded by people who abuse the process,” he told LAist on Tuesday.
“I think it's important that the public understands what programs we're supporting [and] who's receiving public funds,” he added. “As we did in Santa Ana when I was mayor, we did a sunshine ordinance, we made sure that we had robust lobbyist disclosure policies. Those were things that I've always believed in.”
Sarmiento said the concerns that prompted the delay are around the proposal’s disclosure requirements for family members of supervisors’ staff, and the requirement that smaller nonprofits spend no more than 20% of their county funding on “indirect” or “administrative costs.”
“There's massive organizations [that receive county funding] and then there are very small organizations that don't have the sophistication,” Sarmiento told LAist. “So I wanted to make sure we were able to make sure they are treated fairly as well.”
Do does not address proposed reforms
Do did not speak about the proposed reforms at the meeting.
He left the meeting nearly an hour early, at the start of general public comments, and didn’t return. Do was the only supervisor to do so. He and his spokesperson Guadalupe Carrasco didn’t return text messages asking why he left.
The only public comment on the item was from Frances Marquez, a Cypress City Council member running for Do’s seat on the Board of Supervisors.
She said LAist’s reporting has revealed Do violated the public’s trust.
“As elected officials, the people of Orange County entrust us with doing what's right — to put their interests first, to abide by values of transparency, ethics, and accountability,” she said during her public comments.
“But as report after report has made it clear, allegations of corruption have put that trust into question,” she added. “Because an audit does not exist, we do not know if District 1's most at-risk residents received the meals they needed during a deadly pandemic.”
Do cannot run for re-election because of term limits, and has endorsed his co-chief of staff, Van Tran.
Tran has not responded to multiple requests for comment from LAist about the funding of Do’s daughter’s group.
