Countywide : Wieder Postpones Bid to Head Supervisors

Supervisor Harriett Wieder on Tuesday postponed until September her bid to ensure that she becomes chairwoman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors next year.

Wieder said her resolution had raised unspecified “additional housekeeping measures” that needed to be handled, and that she and the current board chairman, Roger R. Stanton, would smooth things out by September.

Former supervisor Bruce Nestande was chairman for less than a month when he resigned in January, midway through his second four-year term, to take a job with a developer. Nestande’s departure paved the way for Stanton to take the chairman’s post, which rotates among the five board members.

Wieder posed this question to her colleagues: If a supervisor becomes chairman more than nine months ahead of schedule, would it count as a full term? That possibility would have ended Stanton’s term at the end of this year, instead of allowing him to serve out Nestande’s term and then his own, and it would have given Wieder the chairmanship next year.

Wieder, who was first elected supervisor in 1978, was passed over twice by her fellow board members for the chairmanship before the system was changed to rotate the largely ceremonial office among them. She finally became chairwoman in 1984.