No Accounting for Lost Check of $37.6 Million

SACRAMENTO — This is a snafu that gives new meaning to the old excuse that the check is in the mail.

The state of California mailed a check for the stratospheric sum of $37,628,740 to the county of Orange more than two weeks ago.

No one has seen it since.

The check never appeared at the county Public Facilities Department, where it was intended to begin paying the state’s share of $1.3 billion in ongoing improvements needed to forestall a catastrophic flood along the Santa Ana River.

State officials scrambled at the county’s request to stop payment on the waylaid check. A new check was cut, and arrangements were made for those beaucoup bucks to be deposited today at a Sacramento bank into a county account.

The glitch, it seems, was a matter of mistaken address.

Officials at the state Water Resources Department were under the impression that the county flood agency was still in an administration building at 12 Civic Center Plaza, Santa Ana. A check for the $37.6 million was cut April 16 and mailed the next day to that address.

Problem is, “that’s not where we reside” anymore, said William Zaun, county Public Facilities and Resources Department chief engineer. The county agency moved its quarters to 300 N. Flower St. in Santa Ana three years ago.

County officials have conducted a search of 12 Civic Center Plaza, but turned up nothing. They speculate their mail carrier may have simply returned the incorrectly addressed letter to its original sender, and the check is now heading back to Sacramento.

Despite its stratospheric size, county officials consider the missing check more an inconvenience than a cause for nightmares. It has not been cashed, and at most the county lost a few days of interest earnings.

“These kinds of things happen,” Zaun lamented. “If someone got a hold of that check, it would be difficult for them to walk into a neighborhood bank branch and say, ‘Here, cash this check for $37 million.’ ”

The delay is oddly apropos. Orange County has been waiting literally for years for the state to make good on its share of the Santa Ana River project costs. The county is only getting money now because state voters in November approved Proposition 204, a bond measure that included funding for the Santa Ana River project.

“We’ve been waiting for years for this flood control funding from the state,” said Don Gilchrist, a district aide for state Sen. John R. Lewis (R-Orange). “A couple of previous flood control bonds and various other attempts to get funding to do this went down the tubes. Now we finally have it, and the ultimate irony is the check is hung up.”