County’s New No. 1 Man Has Eye for Detail : Government: Board chooses David Janssen to be new chief administrative officer for his stable, hands-on style. He faces fiscal and personnel problems.

David Janssen, a career bureaucrat known for his hands-on style and straightforward manner, was named San Diego County’s top executive Tuesday by a Board of Supervisors seeking stability at a time of ongoing fiscal problems and administrative change.

In a decision widely predicted by most observers of county government, the supervisors quickly chose the 46-year-old Janssen, county government’s No. 2 man since 1983, a day after Chief Administrative Officer Norman Hickey announced that he would leave to become city manager of St. Petersburg, Fla. Janssen takes over today.

“David Janssen, we feel, has been doing an outstanding job,” said George Bailey, the board chairman. “He’s in here right now. He knows the budget problems and that’s the immediate basic problem facing us.”

Janssen “has been running the county without the authority to make final decisions for quite a while, six to eight months,” added Supervisor John MacDonald. “We had this person, who’s a good man, ready to go.”

But Janssen said it was only in the past few days that he began devoting attention to whether he would get Hickey’s job.

“There are no givens in public service,” he said. “People should not make the mistake of assuming things that are logical and reasonable because they don’t always happen.”

In contrast to Hickey, who reorganized a county government plagued by scandal when he arrived in 1986 and then spent much of his energy forging links with community groups, Janssen is a detail man who has run the county day to day, crunched budget numbers and lobbied in Sacramento.

Before his arrival in San Diego, Janssen spent 11 years working in state government, including six as director of the Department of General Services. He has described himself as “a doer, not a planner. I much prefer to do something, and if it doesn’t work, do something else.”

Though he promised to follow Hickey’s lead by spending more time before the Chamber of Commerce and the Catfish Club, Janssen’s more immediate tasks will be grappling with the county’s ongoing fiscal problems and settling personnel issues left over from Hickey’s watch.

Janssen said Tuesday that the county, which has run a sizable budget deficit since the fiscal year began July 1, will balance its books by June 30. But the financial picture will be bleaker next year, he said.

“There will be dramatic cuts in many departments in the county if the figures (on next year’s deficit) remain in the neighborhood of $30 million, and our office has to provide the leadership,” Janssen said. “The CAO’s office will be trimmed down as part of the budget process for ‘92-93.”

Janssen said it is too early to determine which staffers in his office may go, but said he hopes to trim $800,000 to $1 million from the office’s $8-million budget. In some quarters, speculation on cuts in Hickey’s staff centers on three special assistants, including former football star Rosey Grier, who have come under scrutiny as the budget grew tighter.

He also said he did not know when--or if--he would fill his old job as assistant chief administrative officer.

Janssen said it is not yet clear whether layoffs will be needed in addition to the current countywide hiring freeze.

The county’s two-year contract with 10,000 of its unionized employees expires June 30. Negotiations over job security, wages and possible give-backs by employees may be on the table as Janssen takes over, said Eliseo Medina, executive director of the San Diego County Service Council.

“We have begun to build a relationship based on mutual respect and we hope it continues to improve,” Medina said of Janssen, who negotiated the voluntary time off program for county employees that is expected to save the county as much as $5 million this year.

In addition, Janssen must confront the problems at the county’s Department of Social Services, the target of two recent scathing county grand jury reports criticizing the agency’s handling of child abuse and welfare fraud investigations. As his last managerial act, Hickey on Monday removed Richard W. Jacobsen Jr., the department’s embattled director, and replaced him with Cecil Steppe as interim director.

Janssen said he has made no decisions on Jacobsen’s future. Through a county spokeswoman, Jacobsen said he would not give interviews Tuesday.

In the long run, Janssen said he is committed to improving the relationship between the county government and city governments, finding a location for a new landfill, opening the county’s nearly vacant new East Mesa jail and bringing rank-and-file employees into the government decision-making process.

“We need to find a way to better involve employees at the bottom of this organization in decision-making,” he said. “If we were more successful in doing that at Social Services, we wouldn’t be where we are.”

Married and the father of a 17-year-old daughter, Janssen has a doctorate in political science from UC Davis and lives in Poway. He was recently approached by the county of Riverside as a possible candidate for the top spot there, but declined, according to Bailey.

Janssen will earn $134,700 in the first year of an open-ended contract negotiated during the board’s two-hour closed session with him and Hickey Tuesday morning. Of that total, $7,500 will be placed into a deferred compensation account.

Hickey, who began looking for work after failing to win a special retirement package he believes he was promised, will receive six months severance pay. Although Janssen assumes the top post today, Hickey will stay on at the county until approximately April 20 to help with the leadership transition.

Janssen is vested in the county retirement system by virtue of his 11 years in state government and nine years here.