Graves Takes Early Exit, but Will Stay on Payroll Through ’85

County Chief Administrative Officer Clifford Graves will officially leave his post Nov. 18 but will continue to be paid his full salary until Dec. 31 as a consultant to the acting chief administrator, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors disclosed Tuesday.

Graves, under pressure from the board, announced his resignation July 3, but the supervisors agreed then to allow him to remain in his job until the end of the year.

In a specially called closed session Monday afternoon, however, the board and Graves agreed that he would leave his post in two weeks and be replaced on an interim basis by David Janssen, assistant chief administrative officer. Graves’ role as a consultant, for which he will continue to be paid his $86,000 annual salary, will be decided by Graves and Janssen.

It was not clear Tuesday whether Graves’ departure was his own idea or came at the request of the board.

“With the year’s end rapidly approaching, I’d like to be freed up from the pleasure of attending Tuesday meetings and Wednesday meetings,” Graves, 46, said in a short statement at the end of Tuesday’s board session. “I’d like to have more flexibility to pursue my own plans.”

Asked by reporters what options he was pursuing, Graves said: “I have too many. That’s my problem. I have to put a little more time into making a decision.” Later, in an interview, Graves declined to say whether the options were specific job offers.

“One of the nice things about looking at the private sector is that you don’t have to reveal things like that,” Graves said.

Janssen, 40, who has been the county’s No. 2 administrator since 1983, said that Graves’ arrangement for the final six weeks of the year will amount to more than just severance pay.

“I fully expect there will be specific projects he will be actively involved in,” Janssen said. Among those projects are a study of the county’s needs for office space for the courts and a review of the Office of Defender Services, Janssen said.

Graves’ pending departure further muddles an already murky management structure at the highest levels of county government, a situation created by Graves’ decision in September to split the troubled Department of Health Services into three separate departments: mental health, physical health and public health services.

Graves appointed acting directors for each new department, reassigned Health Services Director James Forde, and named Janssen to supervise the programs, a role he took over Monday. Janssen was to have retained that responsibility, along with most of his regular duties, until Graves’ successor could decide on a permanent management set-up for the health departments.

But Janssen said Tuesday: “That’s something else we’re going to have to take a look at over the next couple of weeks. There’s no realistic possibility that that can continue.”

The supervisors are expected to name Graves’ successor by the end of the month, but the new chief administrator will probably not take over until January. The board last week reviewed the resumes of 18 candidates put forward by an executive search firm. Confidential interviews with six to nine finalists are expected to be scheduled over the next two weeks.

Graves’ resignation after seven years atop the county bureaucracy came amid increasing criticism from the county grand jury, county supervisors and others familiar with the problems of the Health Services Department. The county’s Edgemoor Geriatric Hospital and Hillcrest mental health hospital have been cited this year by state and federal agencies for substandard patient care, maintenance and management.