The Orange County Taxpayers Association has been a fixture in Orange County politics since its founding in 1986 by tax fighter Reed Royalty. That having been said, for the first time in nearly a quarter-century the organization has decided to start hosting an annual awards dinner where they recognize taxpayer heroes with Rose Awards, enemies of the public purse with Radish Awards, and they also created a new Royalty Award (named for the group’s founder).

I spent several hours at this first annual OC Tax Awards dinner which was held at the Disney Resort’s Grand Californian Hotel. The audience was packed with over 300 people — and by my estimate, at least a third of them were local elected officials. Besides a ton of city council members, school board members, water board members and community and business leaders — a few countywide officeholders and legislators were on hand — including Sheriff Sandra Hutchens, Treasurer Shari Freidenrich, State Senator Lou Correa and Assemblyman Allan Mansoor. The event was emceed by the Chairman of the Board of OC Tax, former Anaheim Mayor and ex-Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle.

If you want to get the full lowdown, with plenty of photos of the event, as well as specifics on award nominees — I extensively live-tweeted the event, and you can check my feed on twitter (@flashreport).

The quick run down on the award recipients — the “Roses” went to the patriots on the Costa Mesa City Council, the Sheriff Sandra Hutchens, and the Association of California Cities — Orange County. The “Radishes” went to OC Employees Association GM Nick Berardino, the Orange County Human Resources Department, and finally the four OC cities with Red Light Cameras — Los Alamitos, Laguna Woods, Santa Ana and Garden Grove. Finally, the high honor of receiving the “Royalty” award actually went to OCTax founder Reed Royalty (how appropriate!). He was totally surprised as OCTax Board Chairman Curt Pringle presented Reed with the award — Reed was appropriately humbled.

All in all, it was a great evening. The best part is that the gauntlet has now been thrown down. Who will be next year’s Roses? Radishes? Who will get the Royalty Award? Tune in about this time next year!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 7th, 2011 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Blog Posts.