EDITORIAL

We concede, accidents happen. But when you are a large municipal agency

that helps many social service groups survive, those accidents aren’t

always easily forgiven.

Such was the case for the county of Orange when officials discovered that

a $1-million grant application for a collaborative of homeless shelters

had been lost under a pile of unrelated boxes.

The collaborative, led by the Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter, had

applied for the competitive grant from the federal department of Housing

and Urban Development in June.

It would have provided the collaborative funding for a program to help

the homeless and disadvantaged residents move into permanent housing by

helping out with various expenses ranging from car registration to child

care. But a box filled with 20 applications of the grant proposal --

which took about five months to write -- was inadvertently mixed up with

other boxes that were part of an office reorganization and move, county

officials said.

Talk about bureaucracy at its worst.

Although the blunder was discovered too late for the collaborative to

compete for the grant this year, it ended up being surprisingly good news

for the shelters in the group. If the county had not lost the

application, there was no guarantee that the Orange Coast Interfaith

Shelter would have been one of the organizations nationwide to be awarded

the grant money.

But a red-faced county Board of Supervisors agreed last month to give

$317,000 to the collaborative so it could begin the program while it

waits to apply for the federal funds next year.

The good news is the county is doing something to make sure what happened

in this case won’t happen again. Although Department of Housing and

Community Development officials characterized losing Interfaith’s

application as a “fluke,” they have instituted a new policy to send

follow-up letters to all agencies confirming receipt of grant

applications.

The bad news is that the county was, in effect, forced to spend $317,000

because of its mistake -- money that could have been used elsewhere.