What Went Wrong?

It’s going to be tough to replace Murray I. Storm, just because of who he was and how he ran Orange County’s Environmental Management Agency. It will be even tougher if county officials can’t tell candidates to succeed him just what it was about relations between his agency and other government officials that would make him walk out on a $90,000-a-year job.

Obviously there was friction of some sort between Storm and Larry Parrish, the county’s chief administrative officer. But was it serious enough to prevent a successor from handling the broad duties of the agency that range from involvement in planning and development to enforcement of environmental regulations?

Was this just a clash of personalities between a veteran county employee and a relatively new top executive? Or is there something about the structure of the job that would make such clashes recur? Those are the kinds of questions to which the Board of Supervisors must find answers.

Supervisors Thomas F. Riley and Bruce Nestande both seemed surprised by the resignation and shocked at losing Storm. Nestande said Storm would be hard to replace. They and the rest of the board also seemed to understand immediately that they need to know more about what went wrong before they can even think of a successor. As we understand it, that was what they discussed in executive session Tuesday. That’s a start.