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Orange County supervisors right to reject OCFA’s ambulance deal

August 27, 2025

The Orange County Board of Supervisors did the right thing this month as it decided to stick with its existing ambulance provider, Falck Mobile Health Corp., for handling 911 calls. It had no real choice given the state-created criteria for evaluating those services. The private company came out on top in the evaluation process involving coverage areas and response times.

Nevertheless, as the VoiceofOC reported, the Orange County Fire Authority at the last minute proposed having the county give it the contract with its own “homegrown” ambulance service. Supervisor Don Wagner rightly accused the agency of throwing “mud on the board” with its promise that using the OCFA provider would somehow allow the county to tap federal funding—a dubious proposition given the ongoing cuts in federal grants.

The county can’t just toss aside is selection procedures at the last moment. An outside analysis reinforces the board’s sensible decision. “Firefighters with Orange County’s largest fire department aren’t meeting best practice goals for how fast they respond to 911 calls, according to a new report, which found their response time has only decreased by around one second from 2018 to 2023,” per a VoiceofOC report in March.

Maybe OCFA should get is own house in order before expanding its operations. Independent analyses need to drive such important decisions. And we remain skeptical about OCFA’s motives. We still recall its outrageous resistance to Placentia’s decision to reduce the pension costs for its firefighting and EMS services, as such costs were crushing the city budget and reducing service.

That battle showed OCFA isn’t as interested in saving taxpayers’ money as protecting its eye-popping compensation packages. By the way, that March report found Placentia’s new fire and EMS department—the same one that OCFA tried to halt—responds more than two minutes quicker than OCFA. The authority also insists on sending fire trucks to EMS calls, which reinforces its featherbedding priorities.

If OCFA wants to win the contract next go-round, it needs to compete on the numbers rather than making vague promises about “free” federal money.

Orange County Register

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Orange County supervisors right to reject OCFA’s ambulance deal

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