OCEA Responds to County of Orange Budget Memo

Dear OCEA member,

We are sure many of you are aware of County Interim CEO Michelle Aguirre’s January 3, 2025, memo outlining certain budget mitigation actions in light of perceived potential County budget shortfalls.

OCEA believes these actions are both premature and unwarranted. They are likely to have an adverse impact on public services, worker recruitment and retention, and your workload. We are so concerned that we believe the proposed actions involving impacts to OCEA-represented employees should be postponed indefinitely, and we have communicated our position directly to the Interim CEO.

You can read the letter we sent to the County CEO at the bottom of this message.

To justify its proposed actions, the County asserted that “[a] deficit was also initially identified for the State’s FY 2025-26 budget with the amount and budget actions unknown.” But the fact is that the recently released proposed California budget projected an initial budget surplus.

Even if budget challenges eventually emerge, suspending essential employee recruitment and reducing services to the community are not solutions.

You may recall that during 2023 negotiations the County rejected an OCEA proposal to proactively address vacancies in OCEA-represented units. But our proposal was grounded in the knowledge that the County, like other public entities, needs to aggressively invest in public service to adequately address the challenges facing our communities.

So, in response to the County’s rejection at the bargaining table, we leveraged OCEA’s strength in Sacramento through the statewide California Federation of Labor Unions to introduce and pass Assembly Bill 2561, which mandates that public entities have a concrete plan to address position vacancies.

One thing is certain. OCEA will fight whenever and wherever necessary on behalf of our members and the residents we all serve. The issues of homelessness, public safety, mental health, protecting children, public health, and many more, demand investment in public service, not premature and unnecessary budget cuts.

In Solidarity,

Charles Barfield
OCEA General Manager

Judy Bowling
OCEA President