Schneider, Top Aide to Nestande, Chosen as Director of EMA

Ernie Schneider, 39, assistant to Supervisor Bruce Nestande, was chosen Wednesday as director of the county’s powerful Environmental Management Agency, where he began his county career 15 years ago.

Schneider said he was “surprised” at being picked by the Board of Supervisors, but, “I think I’ve proved my ability to perform” at EMA and in Nestande’s office. “I feel my good work has been acknowledged by the board with this appointment,” he said in an interview.

Schneider, who became the third supervisor’s aide to be appointed to a lucrative county job in the last 15 months, was one of eight finalists interviewed by the board. More than 120 people applied to succeed Murray I. Storm, EMA head since 1980, who announced in August that he was resigning, effective next week.

Other Finalists

Storm’s four assistant EMA directors--Ronald J. Novello, Robert G. Fisher, Carl L. Nelson and William L. Zaun--also were finalists, as were the city manager of Simi Valley, an official of the regional office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and a plant manager for Texaco.

Schneider, who currently earns nearly $60,000, will be paid between $80,000 and $90,000 in his new job, which he said he expects to begin before year’s end. The exact salary and starting date will be determined later.

Another supervisor’s aide recently promoted was Gary Granville, who worked for Supervisor Ralph B. Clark and was named county clerk in September of 1985. Granville won election to the $61,568-a-year post in June. A year ago Wednesday, George Rebella, an aide to Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, was appointed manager of John Wayne Airport, a post which pays $71,739 a year.

One county official, who declined to be identified but who was not a candidate for the EMA job, expressed concern that the supervisors “may be sending a message that the way to get a good job is to be an EA (executive assistant to a supervisor).” Nestande, however, noted that in the last two years the supervisors have picked applicants from outside Orange County as chief administrative officer and director of the Health Care Agency.

“There is no path” from the supervisor’s office to a major county job, Nestande said. “The message is to be qualified, to be professionally qualified. . . . Ernie is prepared, he is qualified, he sold himself” to the supervisors in his interview Monday.

Schneider, who was born in West Germany on Christmas Day of 1946 and lived in Vienna before coming to the United States in 1952, said, “I really think I’m exceptionally qualified for this job. I started in EMA before there was an EMA.”

After graduating from Cal State Fullerton with a political science degree in 1971, Schneider worked as a systems analyst in the county Flood Control District, eventually becoming executive assistant to the department head, H. George Osborne. Schneider kept the assistant’s job when Osborne became the first director of the newly created EMA in 1975.

Joined Nestande in 1981

In 1981 he became an aide to Nestande, then a newly elected supervisor, concentrating on land-use issues and eventually serving as Nestande’s chief aide.

EMA was one of the last of the county’s so-called super agencies to be created. It brought together flood control, harbors, beaches and parks, roads and housing and community development in one agency in the unincorporated areas of the county.

With 1,200 employees and a budget of more than $200 million a year, the agency plays a key role in planning and development decisions and enforces environmental regulations.

It provides many of the services for unincorporated communities that city governments do for their residents. Much of the county’s unincorporated area is in Nestande’s district.

Schneider said the EMA has “some areas that I thought could use some improvement, some different direction,” but he declined to identify them until he talks with EMA staff.

He said that at EMA, “the easy things have all been done, all that’s left is the hard jobs.” Schneider listed his likely major areas of concern as proposed new freeways in the county, providing new housing and recreation areas and finding sites for such unpopular facilities as jails and landfills.

Storm, 61, who began his work for the county almost 30 years ago as a solid waste engineer, resigned because of friction with the county’s chief administrative officer, Larry Parrish. He said in August that his resignation would let his successor have “a better opportunity to improve the relationship” between the EMA director and Parrish.

Parrish sat in on the supervisors’ interviews with the EMA candidates, but the selection was made by the five board members.