COUNTYWIDE : CAO’s Letter Eases Doubts on Seminar

County Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider, hoping to minimize fallout from an anonymous letter that criticized plans for a September management conference, has written board members to defend the event.

The memo, which supervisors received Tuesday, appeared to sway some of the board members who initially had doubts about whether the county should pay $5,000 for speakers to address a three-day management seminar at a Palm Desert resort.

“I thought a lot about it, and I see the need for the conference,” Supervisor Thomas F. Riley said. “I’m prepared to accept the explanation of the CAO.”

In his memo, Schneider notes that the “annual management conference is an event in which we take pride. Unlike most private and public sector organizations our managers actually pay most of the cost of the conference.”

Schneider said late Tuesday that he expects the conference to go ahead as scheduled, despite a brief flurry of concern that was touched off by an anonymous letter sent to the supervisors last week. In that letter, the writer, identified only as a county employee, sharply criticized the expenditures at a time when officials plan to cut 350 positions out of the county work force to make ends meet.

“How can these managers go to the desert in good conscience while at the same time they are taking away the livelihood of some of their workers?” the letter writer asked.

About 800 county managers have been invited to attend the seminar, scheduled for Sept. 25 through 27, and nearly 150 have indicated that they expect to attend.

County managers are expected to pay their own way, which means spending between $90 and $230, depending on whether the employee spends the nights at the hotel or merely attends the working sessions. The county’s $5,000 will go to pay speakers’ fees but not managers’ personal expenses.

Despite that, several county supervisors said that before receiving Schneider’s memo they were questioning whether the event should go on as scheduled. Tuesday, however, they indicated that they were willing to back the conference, which proponents said would help county managers hone their skills for dealing with the county budget crunch.

“I’m really not ecstatic about the whole thing, but I’m not going to be the monkey wrench,” said Supervisor Don R. Roth. “I guess it’s all right.”