After failing to secure voter approval for a massive, three-quarters-of-a-billion-dollar bond in 2024, the Rancho Santiago Community College District (RSCCD) Board of Trustees has found another way to waste taxpayer dollars.
On September 1, Trustees David Crockett, John Hanna, Zeke Hernandez, Tina Arias Miller and Daisy Tong voted to renew the District’s contract for employee health insurance with the Alliance of Schools for Cooperative Insurance Programs (ASCIP). They chose the ASCIP plan even though another vendor offered a comparable plan at a cost approximately $1.7 million lower.
This is a significant expenditure difference, particularly when the alternative plan offered employees substantially lower individual and family deductibles for both medical and pharmacy benefits.
A Troubling History With ASCIP
The decision is especially concerning given ASCIP’s history with the RSCCD. In 2024, Sara Cardine of the Times/OC reported that ASCIP had been holding millions of dollars belonging to the college district for years. Those funds had not been disclosed to members of the Board or the District’s auditors.
During Chancellor Martinez’s six-year tenure, approximately $8 million was held at one time by ASCIP until Trustee Phil Yarbrough demanded the return of the funds to the District.
That history raises an obvious question. Why would the Board approve on Martinez’s recommendation a plan costing over a million dollars more with ASCIP than a nearly identical available alternative without a compelling financial justification?
The differences between the board members’ comments before the vote were striking. Trustee Yarbrough had clearly done his homework, pressing for specific details to determine whether spending the excess funds was actually justified. By comparison, Trustee Tong appeared unaware that she was voting to approve the final annual rates, raising a serious question about whether she fully understood the decision before her.
A Voice of OC article reported that shortly after the September 1 meeting concluded, Martinez was placed on leave pending an investigation. The reason for the investigation has not been publicly disclosed.
The Union’s Advocacy for ASCIP
While defending the additional expenditure, Faculty President Madeline Grant told employee group representatives on August 25, “The District’s budget is in really good shape.”
A healthy overall budget does not, by itself, establish that an additional $1.7 million is financially justified.
At the September 1 meeting, Grant stated to the Board that faculty preferred to remain with ASCIP. She cited comments from a faculty member who explained that employees would lose certain coverage under the less expensive plan. However, the District’s insurance broker indicated that this characterization was not entirely accurate.
Grant also did not address the difference in deductibles between the two plans. The ASCIP plan had deductibles that were as much as sixty percent higher than those under the less expensive plan.
By emphasizing a concern that the District’s broker had clarified, while omitting ASCIP’s substantially higher deductibles, Grant failed to provide the Board with a thorough and balanced assessment of the two plans. Nevertheless, she told the Board that ASCIP was the superior option.
I also question whether faculty were provided with accurate information when making their preference known. This concern is particularly relevant given Trustee Hanna’s observation that the additional cost of the ASCIP plan could have been used for salaries.
The Trustees’ Responsibility
Grant’s comments in favor of the more expensive ASCIP plan did not relieve the RSCCD trustees of their responsibility to independently evaluate both plans. Ultimately, it’s the trustees, not Grant, the faculty or Chancellor Martinez, who are accountable to taxpayers for determining whether the additional funds for a comparable plan were justified.
That responsibility matters because taxpayers deserve trustees who question a cost, weigh the alternatives and demand justification before approving additional spending of public funds.
Dr. Barry Resnick retired in 2022 after 42 years as a professor of counseling with the Rancho Santiago CCD. He has resided with his family in Orange for 39 years.
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