Postscript: County’s Ex-Skipper Just Putting Around

Robert E. Thomas, who retired in February after 18 years as Orange County’s first--and until that time, only--chief administrative officer, said he is “marching to my own drummer now.”

For Thomas, 66, retirement came after months of jabs and slights from some of the county supervisors and their staffs. One of the slights included passing him over for an annual pay raise.

“I wasn’t forced out,” Thomas said last week. “I could have stayed. But what for? You find, after awhile, that you wear out your welcome.”

Now, he said, “I’m very involved in some volunteer activities. But I’m playing more golf. And while I still get up early, just as I used to, I don’t have to work late, so I can go to bed early now.”

In the living room of his tree-shaded home in Orange, Thomas said that in his final year in county government, some of the five supervisors had indicated they wanted a more aggressive county administrative officer with more political savvy.

“Confrontation has never been my style,” he said. “My style was, and is, consensus.”

Thomas’ style of working behind the scenes suited Orange County supervisors for almost two full decades of rapid growth in the county. The situation has changed in recent years, he said.

“The big change I’ve seen in the county is that county government is much more political than it was when I started 20 years ago,” he said. “In the eyes of some that’s a plus, but in my perspective as a professional, I don’t think the county administration is the better for it. There are too many decisions made on the fifth floor (supervisors’ offices) that are

not made in public.”

Despite friction with some supervisors and their executive assistants in his final year of service, the Board of Supervisors honored Thomas on his retirement by naming the chief county building the “Robert E. Thomas Hall of Administration.”

Thomas said he also takes pride in a letter President Reagan sent in February, which reads: “You should . . . take justifiable pride in reminiscing that under your leadership Orange County has been a nationally recognized, innovative, efficient and effective local government.”

Thomas, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, came to Orange County government in 1964 after retiring from a 23-year career with the Navy with the rank of captain. Initially a civil engineer with

the county, he was promoted to county administrative officer in 1967.

Because he “left the Navy on a Friday and started to work in Orange County the following Mon

day,” Thomas said, he is trying to make sure he has time for himself now. Some of that time, he said, will be spent with his three grown children who live in Southern California. His wife died three years ago.

Tan and leaner (“I’m down from 192 to 179 now”), Thomas says his golf handicap has improved “from a 12 to a 9 since I’ve retired.”

He occasionally returns to the Hall of Administration because he is a member of the county’s retirement advisory board. But he said he doesn’t seek to reminisce.

“When something is over, it’s over,” he said. “I’m totally busy and happy now. And I’m setting my own pace.”