Orange County Government invited residents to provide input on its 2026 Strategic Financial Plan via an email on September 4, titled “Let’s Talk Budget. Orange You Ready?” This invitation opened a public comment period, seeking resident perspectives. However, an examination of the County's published 2026-2027 adopted budget, a document spanning 672 pages, reveals a significant lack of detailed financial information, according to Michael Mavrovouniotis, who retired from a research career in finance and academia.
Mavrovouniotis highlights the budget for OC Animal Care as a prime example of this opacity. The operation, budgeted at $31,353,988 with 143 budgeted positions, manages a shelter, veterinary services, field and patrol services, and licensing, serving 14 contract cities and unincorporated areas. Yet, its complete published financial disclosure, found on one page of the budget's Appendix, contains only five numbers for revenue and five for spending. Crucially, two of these five figures in each category are broad “other” or “miscellaneous” classifications.
On the spending side, the published figures include: Salaries & Benefits ($18,613,834), Services & Supplies ($11,651,841), Other Charges ($962,519), Equipment ($20,000), and Other Financing Uses ($105,794). This level of detail leaves many questions unanswered. For instance, the budget does not specify OC Animal Care's spending on overtime, the breakdown of permanent versus temporary positions among its 143 staff, or how much of the $11.7 million allocated to Services & Supplies goes to outside contractors. Similarly, the budget does not itemize costs for field services, adoption fees, or licensing fees. A single $11.7 million line item, for example, could encompass a range of expenditures from a $100,000 vehicle to a ten-cent pencil.
While County administration might argue that providing such granular detail would be burdensome, the County's own documents contradict this. Volume II of the budget, specifically pages A279 through A296, titled “Description of Major Objects by Classification” and “Description of Revenue Sources by Classification,” defines over 300 distinct account codes used in the County's internal ledger. These include 172 expenditure codes and 142 revenue codes, with examples such as “1900 Professional and Specialized Services” and “2700 Transportation and Travel — Meetings/Conferences.” These distinctions, which would be valuable to citizens, are not reflected in the publicly presented budget.
Furthermore, the OC Animal Care budget page makes an unfulfilled promise, stating that “Detailed budget by expense category and by activity is presented for agency OC Animal Care in the Appendix on page A35.” However, page A35 contains no such activity detail. This specific sentence, with department names swapped, appears over a hundred times throughout the budget, with the promised details often absent.
The lack of detail extends beyond OC Animal Care. Across all of OC Community Resources, a $900 million operation, the budget publishes only sixty-five expense lines, averaging $13.8 million behind each number. The Orange County Housing Authority, with a budget of $352 million, lists just five expense lines. Its Services and Supplies line was budgeted at $23.5 million last year, spent $6.7 million, and is budgeted at $21.3 million again this year, without explanation in the budget. Countywide, the $10.6 billion budget is published across 583 expense lines, averaging $18.1 million per number.
Other counties provide a higher level of transparency. Sacramento County’s Animal Care Services, a $22.5 million operation, smaller than Orange County's, details its budget across four distinct programs: Administration, Community Outreach, Dispatch and Field Services, and Shelter Services. Each program shows its own appropriations, revenue, net cost, and staffing across pages F6-F17 of its budget. This allows Sacramento residents to compare the costs of different services, a capability not afforded to Orange County residents. Similarly, Tuolumne County, with a population of 55,000, publishes every department's budget at the individual account level, including salaries, overtime, office expenses, professional services, and utilities for its animal shelter. Both Sacramento and Tuolumne counties operate under the same California County Budget Act and State Controller accounting manual as Orange County.
Non-profit organizations also often demonstrate more detailed financial reporting. Pasadena Humane, a non-profit animal shelter smaller than OC Animal Care, is required to file a federal Form 990. This form, which features 24 expense lines, breaks down revenue from sources such as its wellness clinic, license sales, adoption fees, and humane education. Its expenses are separately itemized for categories including facility and equipment, veterinary and health, supplies, advertising and promotion, and insurance. Orange County's $31.4 million animal shelter budget does not provide these details to the public.
The County often cites legal requirements for its level of disclosure. While the County publishes what the law requires, the law “expressly permits a county to 'add to the information required, or display it in more detail.'” The law establishes a minimum standard, not a maximum. Sacramento, Tuolumne, and many other counties choose to provide more comprehensive information to their citizens, while Orange County does not. This approach sets a low bar for public service.
Michael Mavrovouniotis concludes that meaningful public participation in budget discussions necessitates three key changes: detailed financial data allowing citizens to understand operations, accurate financial forecasts, and the provision of this budget information to citizens. Without such transparency, the current Strategic Financial Plan comment period serves as an invitation to comment on a spending plan whose specifics are largely unknown to the public. This lack of disclosure raises questions about whether the County is concealing information, as the budget does not provide enough detail for external observers to ascertain the presence or absence of any irregularities.