COMMENTARY ON COUNTY GOVERNMENT : The Necessity for Strong Local Leadership Is Likely to Grow : The cities must have an effective regional body between them and the upper echelons of government.

Orange County is now home to nearly 2.5 million people. With 90% of this population living in incorporated cities, has county government outlived its usefulness? If the state Legislature creates new regional bureaucracies, will local governing bodies become obsolete? The answer to both questions is that the need for a strong leadership role for county government will continue to grow.

Juxtapositioned as it is between the state and the cities, county government has always suffered from (or enjoyed) some degree of obscurity. It has been posited that because of the new cities formed in the 1980s and those proposed for incorporation in the 1990s, the role of county government will diminish significantly. This thesis is specious.

Although county government may be obscure, the functions managed by the county are aimed at solving persistent problems that permeate the social, economic and legal dimensions of our community.

The premise for forecasting a diminution of the role of county government is based on the fact that a majority of future land-use decisions will be made by city councils, not by the Board of Supervisors. Since these decisions have been the subject of much controversy and publicity in the past, some feel that the power and influence of the county will diminish proportionately. This narrow view, however, ignores the multiplicity and heterogeneity of functions, apart from land-use decisions, that the county must perform by mandate or necessity.

The county has little discretion to terminate the services that it provides. If the county reduced the scope of its operations, the vacuum remaining could not be filled at the local level.

Orange County is the most populous county in the nation without a dominant city. The services provided by most of the county’s 29 cities are limited to public safety, public works and land-use activities. The scope of activity is even less in many cities that contract for the sheriff’s and fire protection services.

As city incorporations and annexations proceed, county government must continue to provide essential services to county residents. More city councils and more elected city council members do not diminish the need for district attorneys, public defenders, probation officers and other legal-judicial system professionals. Property valuations and tax collections will continue to be carried out by department heads elected countywide as prescribed by state law.

Either directly or indirectly, county residents are served by a variety of public health, substance-abuse prevention, mental health, and social and children’s services programs that are now organized and administered by county staff professionals. These activities are best managed by the county management infrastructure, not by individual cities. Program quality and consistency are thereby assured. The principle of economies of scale is just as applicable in government as it is in private industry.

Just as business firms take advantage of opportunities to decentralize decision-making to increase effectiveness, the county seeks to take advantage of similar opportunities in its relation to the cities. However, as land-use decisions have passed to newly incorporated cities, few other burdens have been lifted from the county’s shoulders. Indeed the county continues to manage libraries and parks, while struggling to build a new county jail, searching for more landfill capacity, and coping with pleas for more money from the courts.

There are both legal and rational reasons for the present division of authority and responsibility between the county and the cities. There have been suggestions that the county and cities could share some responsibilities. Since the county is a subdivision of state government, it must satisfy an array of state-mandated responsibilities. Sharing responsibilities would mean resolving issues of authority delegation and resource allocation.

Although these difficult questions remain, opportunities do exist for cooperative efforts to solve common problems.

The county and the cities have compiled a good record of mutually beneficial, long-term cooperation working on specific areas such as public safety, solid waste and hazardous-materials disposal, and transportation management. There is also promise that joint efforts to encourage the development of single-room-occupancy hotels will be effective in combatting the homeless problem.

As the intensity of land-use decisions facing the county has subsided, problems of greater complexity have emerged that require planning, engineering and coordinated solutions from the county’s technical and professional staff. This is exemplified by the lead role that the county has played in the Santa Ana River Project being designed and constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Also, the Transportation Corridor Agencies have relied heavily on county engineering support. The county’s management and integrative expertise will continue to be needed for a variety of interjurisdictional projects such as the Beach Boulevard “super-street” venture.

The county often functions as a link between local government and a myriad of other federal, state and special-purpose agencies. In that capacity, county government facilitates communication at the local level while exerting some influence upward on higher levels of authority.

There is some speculation that a new alignment of local government, using a regional blueprint, may be dictated by Sacramento. Unfortunately, the legislators who want to alter local government are probably unfamiliar with it.

If new ground rules for local government are forthcoming from the state Legislature, it is unlikely that they will be crafted by former city council members or county supervisors. Just what legislative leaders have in mind is unclear. Hopefully, they will not become enamored with regionalism in the absence of a clear definition of common local problems. Southern California counties are not homogeneous and regional government can offer no panacea for problems in a differentiated social and political environment.

Perhaps an argument may be made to justify a regional planning body to address a single, clearly identifiable problem, or group of closely related issues, whose pervasiveness transcends local geopolitical lines. Unfortunately, some advocates of regionalism tend to go far beyond the originally stated purpose, usurping the authority of locally elected officeholders and, in a sense, disenfranchising the electorate along the way. To avoid this consequence, regional structures should be designed similar to the project-management structures used in industry--with sufficient definition and authority to get the job done, but limited in scope and longevity.

The complexity of local issues is best addressed by strengthening local representation and better utilizing it to more effectively solve problems. Cities and counties have always been on the front line in that regard. These more accessible and responsive levels of government should be able to work with regional bureaucracies, but they must never be dominated by them.

The advent of more cities in Orange County does not alter the mission of county government. Traditional service-delivery needs will be driven by the size and diversity of the population. A major strength of county government will continue to be its contribution to the stability of the interaction between local and state governments.

The administrative and technical expertise of the county will be a valuable resource to cities, schools and a variety of special districts within the county. Also, the talented, professional county staff is the best safeguard to minimize the potential of regional bodies to short-circuit representative local government.

As county government manifests its leadership role in the future, it should be noted that real leadership, effective and enduring, is based on competency, not showmanship.