Is the County Committing Fraud?

County representatives have been doing an expensive dog and pony show in the past few months, trying to entice cities to stay with the County’s animal care service. Community Services Director Steve Franks and OCAC Shelter Jennifer Hawkins collectively cost about $500,000 a year, so having the two of them touring is a big expense for the County. In addition to promising a new shelter, they talk about the low kill rate and the high compliance rate. Yet we have demonstrated proof that their data about how many animals they kill is flawed, as is their compliance data. Is the County supplying the data committing fraud?

Fraud is defined as “the intentional misrepresentation or concealment of an important fact upon which the victim is meant to rely, and in fact does rely, to the harm of the victim.”

Let’s look at the elements –

· “Intentional” – The County has been on notice for more than 6 months that their published euthanasia rates and their compliance rates were incorrectly represented, yet they persisted in using these rates. For euthanasia their stated rate was less than half the true rate (e.g., 9.6% vs 23% for dogs), and for compliance, as shown by Lake Forest resident Randy Johnson, it was 20% higher than reality (52% vs. 43%). On January 26, 2016 they admitted their misrepresentation (although they denied it was intentional) and subsequently changed the data on their website for the euthanasia rate, but failed to do so for the compliance rate. Supervisors Bartlett and Spitzer were also informed of these problems as early as September 2015. They never commented. Even now, the change they made in euthanasia is subject to errors.

· “Misrepresentation” – The ways in which the euthanasia rate was under-represented and the compliance rate was exaggerated have been presented before. Click Here.

· “Concealment” – The County has not only been misrepresenting the data, according to the No Kill Shelter Alliance and other reputable groups, they have been concealing the fact that when they exterminate an entire litter, they count this as a single euthanasia. If each life was considered a death, the euthanasia rate would be much much higher.

· “Important fact” – Cities who consider signing on with the County look at various key performance indicators to justify the contract. Euthanasia rate and compliance rate are surely “important facts”. In some senses, for a City, compliance rate may be even more important than euthanasia rate, because compliance rate shows how much money is being generated. If the County has high compliance rates it means the cities will spend less for the service. But the County’s real compliance rates are much lower than what they advertise.

· “Victim reliance” – Some City council members are slaves to what the County says. Councilman Robinson, for example, keeps repeating the false data from the County Sheriff’s Department on the costs of the Police contract, even though he has been corrected by me and by City Manager Dunek. This show just how strongly some people defer to authority. I think it goes without saying that the victim (i.e., the City) relies on the data provided by the County, unless someone else corrects it, and even then the fact that the County is providing the data has a strong appeal.

· “Harm of the victim” – Needless to say the harm to the City is far less than the harm to thousands of animals that are killed and that die on the way to the shelter. Nonetheless, the harm to the City comes when the City accepts the data and falsely believes that OCAC is doing a better job than it is doing. In Lake Forest, this meant that we went nearly two decades without looking for a competitive bid, and bear in mind, the City claims that competitive bidding is a major part of our business ethos.

I’m not a lawyer so I can’t comment on whether or not the behavior by the County constitutes fraud in the legal sense. Each element of the definition seems to be met, and yet the dog and pony show continues. What is even more curious is the recent behavior of Supervisors Bartlett and Spitzer, who in their remarks last week seemed surprised that this data existed. Did they not read my e-mails in September and again in November? Did they miss the articles on The Patch and The Voice of OC? Did they not read the reply from OCAC in January?

If the “truth in lending” laws applied to the County, this is what the Supervisors and the County should be asking when they offer their product to the cities. For Lake Forest the deal looks like this -

Put $555,000 down and pay $600,000 a year and for this

• · 20% of the animals we pick up will arrive dead.
• · Nearly 40% of those that make it alive will be killed.
• · We won’t supply enough staff or train them properly.
• · We will make it difficult for rescue groups to work with us.
• · We will be sued for breaking the laws.

That sounds great. Where do I sign?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out onLinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 4 pm to 6 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a mini town meeting every month. The next meeting will be on April 9 at 2 pm at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.