Jury Urges Requiring County Workers to Wear ID Badges : Government: All employees get the name tags, but few must put them on. The change is recommended to improve security.

“Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges.”

Ventura County government employees don’t put it quite so strongly as the Mexican bandit in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” but they do have milder reservations about a proposal that they all wear identification badges while at work.

The Ventura County grand jury made the proposal this week in the interests of better security. But, from prosecutors to janitors, the reaction was that the proposal may be more trouble than it’s worth.

“I’m not crazy about pinning things on my clothes and having to put my badge on every morning,” said Assistant Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Colleen Toy White, who added that, from a fashion standpoint, the badge suggestion is potentially troublesome for women.

“If you are wearing a dress you get into issues like: ‘Where do I clip it?’ ” she said. “I don’t think anybody wants to clip it to a silk blouse.”

The recommendation came in a grand jury report that says security at county facilities would be improved if all county employees wore their county-issued badges every day.

“Visitors have been observed in ‘employee only’ areas, going unchallenged and unimpeded,” the grand jury report says.

Although each county employee is issued an ID badge on the first day of work, it is up to each department head to decide whether to require employees in that department to wear the badges.

Most county employees who were interviewed recently at the Government Center said they have no objections to the grand jury’s idea, but only a few were wearing their badges.

Their excuses ranged from concern that the clip used to hold the badges might wrinkle a blouse to fear that an obsessed citizen might jot down their name and harass the county worker at home.

“My own personal feeling is I don’t know if it’s necessary for all county employees to wear them,” said George Mathews, director of the county’s Informational Services Department.

He said name badges should be required in departments where security is a high priority. Elsewhere, it would just be security overkill, Mathews said.

The whole question of whether to ID or not to ID was moot for custodian Bill Betralba because he said he lost his badge just about the time the grand jury made its proposal.

Besides, he said, who else but a county employee would push around a trash container all day and pick cigarette butts out of ashtrays at the Government Center?

Martha McLaughlin, a records assistant at the county courthouse, said she has no objections to wearing an identification badge to work. After all, she does meet with the public every day.

The only problem is that the last time she saw her badge it was buried at the bottom of her purse beneath an assortment of loose change, makeup and other contents, she said.

“I’d put it on, but I don’t want to have to dig through all my makeup and stuff.”

Marla Horn, who works with McLaughlin as a records assistant, also has no problems with wearing a badge. But she wonders why it is necessary.

“Hey, I know who I am,” she quipped.

But there were some employees who wholeheartedly support the grand jury’s idea.

County Treasurer and Tax Collector Hal Pittman likes the idea of wearing a name badge so much that in addition to the county-issued badge, he had a large name tag made for himself.

He recalled that he was once without his extra-large name tag when he began a heated discussion with a woman about her taxes.

“Well, that’s all well and good,” Pittman recalled the woman saying, “but I want to talk to Mr. Pittman,”

Pittman reponded: “You have a problem, lady, because I am Mr. Pittman.”