Time to Retire Some Troubling Traits : * County Pension System Should Heed Audit’s Blueprint for Reform at the Top
The beleaguered Orange County Employees Retirement System is under fire again.
This time, the system’s well-publicized troubles over travel expense reimbursements are merely one item among several issues that turn up in a highly critical independent management audit.
This is a $1.6-billion pension fund. That’s a lot of money at stake. It’s time to put the system in order. Apparently, something more than a good travel agent is in order.
In 72 recommendations delivered to the county retirement board in 99 pages, the accounting firm of KPMG Peat Marwick cites troubling leadership deficiencies on the staff that it says could harm the administration of the pension fund.
To its credit, the board recently acted to prevent future abuses in travel after Orange County Auditor-Controller Steve E. Lewis rejected $5,000 in personal expense claims for such items as opera tickets, dry cleaning and alcoholic beverages--expenses incurred when four board members, the retirement fund administrator and several guests took a 26-day European trip in April.
That was embarrassing enough. But the question of the quality of the system’s leadership--which was lurking in the background of the travel flap--has raised its head in the audit.
The five-month inquiry turns up a lack of “teamwork” and “mutual respect” among the 27 members of the retirement system’s staff. It notes the dual role of one retirement board member who is also a retirement system employee, an obviously confusing arrangement for staff members.
It also found a failure to conduct timely performance evaluations or to post staff vacancies and determined that contract-bidding and approval procedures are flawed.
Fund administrator Mary-Jean Hackwood, who has been out of town, has been criticized by a retirement board member, Tax Collector-Treasurer Robert L. Citron. Hackwood is expected to respond to the review next month and ought to have a fair opportunity to give her side of things.
But the general portrait emerging in recent weeks is inescapably that of a system somewhat at loose ends. The auditor’s recommendation for annual reports from the administrator to the board, outlining goals and objectives, is an important one. So is the call for quarterly performance reports on some managers. Such suggestions for improving the way the system does business, and for bolstering its credibility, are worth taking seriously.
