The People Have Spoken, Now Get Out

The Angry Citizen walked into a meeting of the Orange County supervisors and took a seat. This was the board’s first public session since the county declared itself bankrupt, and so the gallery Tuesday was packed. The Angry Citizen found himself surrounded by bankruptcy attorneys, brokers, bureaucrats.

Waiting for the session to begin, these learned insiders chatted easily among themselves of $50 million frozen here, $100 million frozen there. “We’ll be OK,” one said, “if we can hold on until the spring property tax payments come in.” Most wore fine suits; a few did business on cell phones from their chairs. Busy, informed people.

The Angry Citizen was not of them. He came dressed in a brown herringbone sports jacket and no-wrinkle slacks. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and sensible shoes. A scratch across his cheek marked where he had cut himself shaving. He had written down what he wanted to say on a small sheet of office scratch paper.

The meeting began. Right away, the supervisors invoked the Brown Act and retired to a private chamber. The Angry Citizen waited. The supervisors emerged about 30 minutes later to announce that, with investment fund losses now in excess of two B-boy billion dollars, a New York investment firm would be hired to navigate the county back from the swamp. With no money to spend, there was not much additional business to conduct. And so the session progressed quickly to that sporting moment in democracy known as Public Comment.

*

First to the microphone was a woman who’d driven up from Dana Point on a work break. “You are incompetent,” she raged at the board members. “You should resign.” They gave nothing back, not a word, not a frown. “Hope you enjoyed your trip up this morning,” Thomas Riley, the jowly, silver-haired board chairman, crowed sarcastically as the woman stormed away.

She was followed by some clown in a St. Patrick’s Day derby and an orange skirt. He called himself Will B. King, carried a toilet plunger and made rambling complaints about county finances. He would say a few words, retire to his seat, and then come back and start anew. Every time the supervisors saw him coming, they would blanch. “You are not serious, “ Riley sniffed importantly. “We have serious business.”

This brought a chuckle from the banker-lawyer brigade, but Riley did not seem to grasp that the joke was on himself--a “supervisor” who had just helped supervise a tumble into bankruptcy by the nation’s richest county. A serious piece of work.

Now to the podium came the Angry Citizen. He gave his name: Stephen D. Johnson. He gave his address: Tustin. He was, he would say, “just a small-town attorney. Born in Orange. 1946. Republican.” In other words, he belonged to that large tribe of conservative populists who have long dominated the voting end of Orange County politics.

That a million or more Stephen Johnsons were out there--in La Habra and Tustin and Fullerton and Orange, all still sorting through the fiscal calamity, what it might mean to their lives, who to blame and so on--should have prompted the supervisors to pay close attention to what the Angry Citizen had to say. Should have.

*

He spoke well, in plain, simple language and clear voice, with his chin out. Picture Jimmy Stewart’s Mr. Smith; that’s our hero. The Angry Citizen wanted to know why so many decisions were being made behind closed doors. “That is taxpayer money,” he said of the dwindling investment fund. “That is public business.”

He wanted to know how it happened, how the supervisors had failed to keep watch over the treasurer. He noted their attempts to spread the blame. He compared them to leaders of some fallen coup, trading in military uniforms to hide out among the commoners. He wanted to know why the supervisors have “not even said you’re sorry.” He wanted to know why they did not resign, or at least take a pay cut.

“You lost 27% of our money,” the Angry Citizen said, ignoring the red light that indicated his 180-second allotment of citizen participation had expired. “Each and every one of you can take a 27% pay cut, right here and now.”

This was too much for Riley. He pounded his gavel. “Is there a sheriff in here? Sheriff, sheriff, sheriff. Get this man out of here.”

“Are you going to remove me?” the Angry Citizen demanded, indignant.

“Yes, we are going to remove you.”

And so they did. The Angry Citizen was run from the room by an officer of the law. His apparent offense: poking around in the business of the elected. It might be described as incredible, except that in Orange County this is a word--like the investment fund itself--fast losing its value.