Supervisor Katrina Foley will continue to represent a newly created District 2 in central Orange County, rather than the area where voters elected her last year, after her Board of Supervisor colleagues ignored her request to ask the state Attorney General’s opinion on the timing of recent district boundary changes.

Foley won a March 2021 special election for the District 2 seat, left vacant after Michelle Steel was elected to Congress in November 2020. (Steel’s term on the board would have run through 2022.)

At the time, the district stretched north along the coast from Newport Beach and Costa Mesa to the county line and took in some smaller inland cities, including Los Alamitos and Cypress.

But after the 2020 census, the county was required to redraw the five supervisor districts to help balance populations and ensure fair representation for residents. The board approved a new map in late November and the county switched to using the new districts in January.

Foley, the only supervisor whose new district had no overlap with her old one, questioned why the county switched just weeks after new boundaries were approved rather than waiting for the next regular election.

County Counsel Leon Page has disputed Foley’s interpretation of the law and said the county promptly switched to new maps when it redrew district lines in 2000 and 2011. On Tuesday, he said he stands by his opinion.

At a board meeting Tuesday, Foley asked colleagues to agree to request Attorney General Rob Bonta’s opinion to help settle the matter.

“I don’t know how it would be American and democratic for a board majority to be able to, by a majority vote, assign a board member to an area where they were not elected to, and disenfranchise the voters,” she said.

She said she brought the issue up for formal discussion because, although supervisors had promised to cooperate after the switch, she has projects underway in her old district that “we are now being hindered from completing on behalf of the residents and the businesses that elected me.”

The board has held several discussions on how spending money outside the district it was allotted to is unfair to residents and against the board’s rules.

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The upcoming election for three board seats – including the new District 2 and District 5, where Foley lives and is seeking election – has made the issue even more contentious. District 4 is also on the ballot.

It’s unclear whether Bonta will weigh in.

While state Sen. Tom Umberg has requested his opinion, the county won’t be asking. Foley’s proposal on Tuesday died without a vote, when none of the other board members would support it.