Storm’s Resignation Spurs Call to Study Environment Office

Developers upset with the Orange County Environmental Management Agency took advantage Tuesday of the resignation of agency director Murray Storm to push for a full-scale study of the agency that regulates their businesses.

County supervisors, meanwhile, professed continued puzzlement over Storm’s abrupt and unexpected announcement Monday that he was resigning because of conflicts with county Chief Administrative Officer Larry Parrish.

In a closed session, the supervisors agreed to invite Storm to meet with them privately and elaborate on his reasons for leaving his $90,000-a-year job if the session does not conflict with state open-meeting laws.

Gains Seen From Study

Developers praised Storm personally and said they had been talking about requesting a study of the agency even before the director announced his departure. But they said a review of the so-called “super agency,” formed 11 years ago as a consolidation of numerous departments and one of the most powerful instruments in county government, would help agency staffers, supervisors, developers and Storm’s successor.

“It seems to me it would be a good time to take an overview of that department and how the pieces are put together,” said Philip Bettencourt, vice president of Tustin-based Gfeller Development Co. and an official in the county chapter of the Building Industry Assn.

“I think it should be a firm with impeccable national credentials” that conducts the study, Bettencourt said.

“I’ve personally been a strong supporter of Murray Storm’s leadership,” he said, but “maybe a fresh look at how things are done would be helpful to all.”

Bettencourt said some developers in unincorporated areas of the county, where the EMA holds sway, had complained that the agency showed “a lack of urgency in getting plans processed, delays in getting plan reviews completed, some indications that the fees charged have exceeded the costs of the services and sometimes just the lack of responsiveness within the agency to individual problems.”

He noted that the agency has more than 1,000 staffers who “have to balance the public interest with private business.”

Source of Contributions

Although environmental groups have sometimes charged that the supervisors have too cozy a relationship with developers, who are a major source of campaign contributions, Bettencourt said, land regulations in Orange County “are as intense, as detailed, as obtuse, as specific as you would find anywhere.”

The executive director of the Building Industry Assn., John Erskine, said a developer submitting an application to EMA required approval from 25 divisions and sometimes watched in frustration as an application sat on a bureaucrat’s desk for long periods.

He said builders would be happy to have excess fees they have paid applied to computerization of the agency to speed up the approval process. Noting that builders are concerned by what they see as an increasing movement in some areas of the county to slow the pace of development, Erskine said, “All our guys are really looking for if we are to have slow growth is a quick ‘no.’

“The worst thing in the world is to be jerked around by a Byzantine system and then be eighty-sixed anyway. . . . Don’t just have things languish (because of inaction) on the part of staff.”

Perceived Attitude Problems

He said a survey of association members showed that “in general they felt the problems were attitudinal” within some divisions of EMA, with “problems of repetitious checks and staff asking for different information on items . . . typical bureaucratic problems.”

Bettencourt and Erskine said they were surprised by the resignation of Storm, who said he plans to work another 90 days, take accumulated vacation and be out of the office by Jan. 5.

Supervisor Bruce Nestande, saying “I can’t praise him enough,” called Storm’s announcement “a rather straightforward thing. He’s got 30 years in now. He can quit now while he can still begin a new career. . . . Maybe he and Parrish have said a few things to each other, but to me it’s not of (enough) significance to cause him to resign.

“I deeply regret his quitting, but at the same time I certainly understand it. I wish he were not quitting, but I certainly would not try to talk him out of it.”

In his letter to supervisors Monday, Storm said that in recent months “I have come crosswise with our CAO” and “I do believe that the board will be ill-served when there is discord between two of its key advisers.”

A veteran of nearly 30 years with the county and EMA director since April, 1980, Storm said in an interview Monday he was unable to persuade Parrish “that the agency wanted to be a team player” in county government.

Explanations After the Fact

Parrish agreed that he thought EMA was not keeping the administrative office aware of its plans, saying there was “incident after incident” of EMA going its own way and explaining its actions only “after the fact.”

“There was an absence of respect for what my office was supposed to be doing,” Parrish said, although he and Storm continued to praise each other after the resignation.

Parrish was brought in as CAO from Santa Barbara County, where he held the same post, more than a year ago after Robert E. Thomas resigned the Orange County post in the wake of continued criticism by supervisors that he was not taking a strong enough role in overseeing county government.

Parrish has moved quickly to exercise his authority in the county--at $99,000 a year he is the top-paid county official--and received lavish praise, a 10% raise and extra vacation time as a bonus at his performance review this summer. Storm received a raise of 2.5%.

The men have clashed occasionally since Parrish took office, most recently several weeks ago when Storm sent Parrish a memo on an administrative matter and Parrish scrawled comments on the memo and sent it back. Storm told friends the comments were “the worst I’ve received in 30 years in government.”