The saying “a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic” is often attributed to Joseph Stalin, but it’s disputed that he actually said it. Nevertheless, it highlights an important fact—people are easily outraged by smaller stories that are easy to grasp, but tend to shrug at bigger faceless problems. It offers a lesson for government officials, who routinely spend huge sums — but get clobbered for wasteful small ones.

Hence, we look at the fracas over the Orange County Water District’s proposal to spend $10,000 on a “First Responder Appreciation Luncheon.” Thanks to reporting from the Register’s Teri Sforza, the proposal met public pushback. Last week, the district tabled the proposal and is likely to scale it back.

To our point, OCWD “spent more time discussing a $10,000 allocation than the many millions of dollars’ worth of projects on the consent calendar,” per Sforza. It’s not a lot of money in the scheme of things — and is a tiny portion of, say, any firefighter’s annual pension — but the idea speaks volumes about the agency’s judgment.

OCWD manages groundwater supplies for the county. The agency, according to the article, doesn’t even respond directly to fires or work directly with first responders. Everyone appreciates the work firefighters do in responding to emergencies and protecting public resources, but, per Sforza again, that’s just a firefighters’ job. It’s a well-paid one at that.

She notes that a cynic might say “it’s a good way for water board members mulling runs for higher office to rub elbows with influential folks in the public safety unions.” She hit the nail on the head. OCWD Director Steve Sheldon also made a key point: “I’ll be the first to say I support first responders 100%. … I feel this expense is not appropriate. We can find other ways to do this.”

This brings to mind the time county supervisors received brickbats for remodeling their offices. Optics matter and this party had poor ones. The board should scrap the entire idea and post a thank-you note on its website.