County Hall Becomes Temple Street Circus : Government: The week’s upheavals stir emotions and attract a crowd to normally quiet board room. On hand are critics, the curious and a gadfly dressed as a clown.

On an ordinary day, many adjectives apply to the proceedings inside the Los Angeles County Hall of Administration. Boring. Predictable. Dull.

But Tuesday was no ordinary day at the enormous, tomblike building on Temple Street. Suddenly, people were using terms such as “three-ring circus” and “zoo” to describe the hubbub.

In less than 24 hours, a stinging report on the Sheriff’s Department had shaken up county government, and Richard B. Dixon, the county’s most powerful bureaucrat, had made a surprise announcement that he intends to resign in the wake of continuing allegations of excessive spending and abuse of power.

Together, the two events signaled important changes in Los Angeles County government, changes reflecting growing public attention to the $12-billion bureaucracy, which in years past has operated in relative obscurity.

Tuesday’s brouhaha also pointed to a coming season of political conflict, as the Board of Supervisors deals with revelations of bureaucratic bungling, misconduct by sheriff’s deputies and an impending budget crisis.

The ordinarily sedate boardroom was transformed into a theater of the absurd as a man dressed in a clown suit interviewed a supervisorial candidate and television crews moved among tangled stage lights on the dais.

Dixon, the chief administrative officer, was a popular topic in the cheap seats. “I’ve been keeping an eye on him for a long time. He’s full of it. The government is all screwed up,” said Robert Ochoa, 25, a messenger for the county health department who spent his afternoon break watching the board proceedings. “Once they (the board members) get reelected they don’t care what the constituents think.”

Ochoa was one of dozens of county employees who joined hundreds of people in filling the board room to watch history in the making. They included the usual contingent of AIDS protesters and assorted gadflies--along with more than two dozen reporters drawn by the scent of scandal and political controversy.

The reporters elbowed each other for space, aiming their cameras and microphones at Dixon, the bespectacled career bureaucrat under fire for the $6.1-million renovation of his sumptuous suite of offices and criticized for wielding extraordinary, unchecked power over county finances.

During what was supposed to be a brief recess, the supervisors’ meeting broke into a half-dozen impromptu press conferences.

At one end of the room, conservative Supervisor Mike Antonovich fumed about the “media assassins” who he said helped bring down Dixon and smeared the reputation of the Sheriff’s Department and its leader, Sheriff Sherman Block.

“This represents the culmination of a vicious media and political character assassination based on half-truths and outright lies,” Antonovich said.

At the other end of the room, liberal Supervisor Gloria Molina basked in victory--she had been the first to call for Dixon’s resignation earlier this year. A television reporter asked: “So Gloria, is this another notch in your belt?”

Molina shook her head, choosing instead to be more diplomatic. “This is a step forward in the reform of county government,” she said of Dixon’s resignation. She could not resist adding in Spanish: “ Ya era tiempo .” (“It’s about time.”)

Supervisorial candidates Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) joined the ruckus a few minutes later, conducting interviews in the aisles until the board chairman banged the gavel and called for order.

Adding to the circus atmosphere was E. T. Snell, a board gadfly. On Tuesday, Snell showed up dressed in a clown suit, complete with fluorescent green hair.

Snell used a tape recorder to interview Watson, who politely answered his questions.

It was a spectacle of the sort not seen in the county for years. “What a zoo!” one supervisor’s deputy called out. “It’s a feeding frenzy!”

But for the tight circle of county employees loyal to Dixon, it was a day of deep sadness. Mary Jung, Dixon’s top assistant, wiped away tears as her boss strode into the boardroom to face the public.

“It’s unfortunate that he got railroaded out of office,” she said. “He is irreplaceable to the county.”

For others, however, Dixon’s impending departure was like the death of a malevolent despot, an event to be joyously celebrated.

“People are cheering in the hallways around here,” said Gilbert Cedillo of Service Employees International Union, Local 660, the largest union of county workers. “People are elated. They’re clapping their hands and patting me on the back.”

Cedillo and other union activists have tangled with Dixon for years, contending that he epitomized elitism within the county bureaucracy. The CAO sought to instill corporate values in government, rewarding top department heads with bonuses while asking the rank and file to accept sharp pay cuts.

“He represented a system of patronage,” said Guido DeRienzo of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “He rewarded his friends and punished his enemies.”

Dixon’s resignation and the study of the Sheriff’s Department were just part of a series of reports to shake the board recently. Over the past year there have been numerous accounts of bureaucratic bungling in the health department and revelations of irregularities in the county pension system.

On Tuesday morning, Joel Bellman, press deputy to Supervisor Ed Edelman, was clipping out newspaper stories on another bombshell--the Kolts report on the Sheriff’s Department--when an aide interrupted him with the news of the latest shocker, Dixon’s resignation plans.

“The news hit our office like a thunderbolt,” Bellman said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Some date the growing spectacle at the Hall of Administration to the arrival of Molina. Before she became the board’s first Latina supervisor in March, 1991, the members of the all-white, all-male board were known as “the five little kings” because of their enormous power.

Molina learned of Dixon’s resignation during an early morning press conference.

“She cracked a big smile and said, ‘You’re kidding,’ ” spokesman Robert Alaniz said. “It was almost a relief because he’s been such an obstacle to us since we’ve been here.”

Still, Tuesday was a day of mixed emotions in her camp.

“It feels like the end of a battle,” Gerry Hertzberg, a Molina aide, said of Dixon’s resignation. “You’re happy you won, but you’re not happy about all the people injured in the process.”