UCI, Business Leaders Plan Joint Campaign to Assist O.C. : Crisis: Policy, budget counsel to be given. Executives get status report from county adviser Thomas W. Hayes.
Orange County business leaders and top UC Irvine officials joined forces Wednesday in an attempt to help county officials deal with tough budget and policy decisions resulting from the ongoing bond crisis.
In his first talk specifically to business executives, former state treasurer Thomas W. Hayes, now the county’s top financial adviser, gave a briefing Wednesday morning to an audience of about 100. Executives and academics then began crafting plans for what Pacific Scientific Chairman Edgar S. Brower described as a “war room” that would help the county cope with new fiscal realities since its investment pool lost more than $2 billion this year.
Hayes told industry leaders that the sale of troubled investments is “going very well,” but that the $5.4 billion fund remains in a “very, very risky position” because the remaining investments are still subject to potentially damaging market and interest rate fluctuations.
Hayes said that, in the past week, the county has sold a third of the bonds and certificates of deposit it hopes to remove from its portfolio. Later in the day, the county sold about $280 million in structured international bank CDs and is expected to sell more investments today.
UCI Chancellor Laurel L. Wilkening pledged the support of key UCI personnel for the planned task force. “At the minimum, we can be the common ground where people meet,” Wilkening said after the meeting. “We also have expertise and could provide some leadership.”
Dennis Aigner, dean of UCI’s Graduate School of Management, agreed to write a mission statement “that will help guide the business and academic communities in assisting the county.”
“As a businessman, I’d like to participate in something like that,” said Brower, who described UCI as having a wealth of academic talent to make it “the ideal candidate” to guide the planned business-academic partnership. Brower said county officials could benefit from the experiences of local businesses that responded to the recent recession by restructuring their companies.
The meeting, held at UCI, “served to get people talking to each other,” said Todd Nicholson, president of the Industrial League of Orange County, a business advocacy group that last week announced a planned merger with the Orange County Chamber of Commerce & Industry.
The Industrial League and the chamber earlier expressed interest in creating a task force that would bring the business community’s expertise to bear on the bond crisis. “It makes sense to roll all of (the business organizations) in under one roof, under one umbrella,” Nicholson said after the meeting. “That way we won’t have different folks going off on their own.”
Wednesday’s meeting was sponsored by Partnership 2010, an economic development group that includes leaders from the county’s business, academic and political sectors. Outgoing County Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, who established Partnership 2010 in 1991, also spoke during the session.
Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles County, said that Orange County business leaders are taking “a very wise step. . . . What you’re starting to see is the coalescing of Orange County’s business community, which up to this point has been a little bit fractured.”
“It’s tough to get people together,” Kyser said. “But it’s the smart thing to do. Any time you see an urban area get into (financial) trouble, the business community has always gotten involved.”
