New County Treasurer Is No Stranger to Crises : Finance: Thomas E. Daxon took over a troubled Oklahoma auditor’s office in 1978 that was in such disarray that the federal government threatened to cut off funds.

In 1980, the state auditor in Oklahoma was holding seminars for county treasurers, trying to persuade them to invest their idle public funds rather than let them sit in no-interest checking accounts.

Today, Thomas E. Daxon is a county treasurer, appointed in Orange County on Thursday to help recover from the catastrophic investments of his predecessor, Robert L. Citron.

Daxon, 48, was appointed to a four-month term, because Daxon is in demand. He already had been appointed Oklahoma’s finance director, and it took an appeal from California Gov. Pete Wilson to Oklahoma Gov. David Walters to postpone that obligation.

Daxon won election as auditor in Oklahoma in 1978, unseating a 20-year Democratic incumbent who had let the office lapse to the point that the federal government was threatening to cut off federal funds. Daxon, then 32, became the only Republican to hold statewide office.

A native of Oklahoma City, Daxon had been a Republican activist early on, serving as president of the Oklahoma College Republicans at Oklahoma State University, where he graduated with a degree in economics. He served as a youth coordinator for the 1968 Reagan campaign in Oklahoma. After graduation, he joined the staff of the Campus Crusade for Christ and the Tulsa CPA firm of Hurdman and Cranstoun.

Once in control of the state auditor’s office, Daxon made changes that within a year restored the office to good standing with the federal government.

He also began a series of controversial government audits, which opponents contended were politically motivated. He sued the state tax commission for access to its records, then issued a report accusing it of losing a fourth of its income-tax returns in 1978. Critics said he was merely positioning himself to run for governor.

Encouraged by voters’ 1980 election of President Ronald Reagan, Daxon opposed incumbent Gov. George Nigh, a Democrat, in 1982. His campaign mirrored many of the successful Reagan tactics.

Daxon criticized Nigh for “lavish spending,” promised a 15% across-the-board income-tax cut and property tax cuts to be financed by reducing “governmental waste and inefficiency.” But he was trounced by Nigh, who received 62% of the vote and became the first governor in Oklahoma history to win a second term.

As Daxon left the auditor’s office in 1983, he issued a report listing 15 ways county governments could cut their costs.

Among them: hiring temporary employees or rotating permanent employees among offices; sending state money directly to cities and school districts rather than relaying them, at added expense and delay, through the county treasurer; depositing tax money immediately into interest-bearing bank accounts to maximize interest yield.

He set up his own accounting firm in Tulsa and Oklahoma City, then in 1983 moved his family to Virginia and signed on with accounting giant Arthur Andersen & Co., serving as an adviser on government audits and accounting until 1989.

Daxon managed an investment partnership that made loans to bail out high-tech companies. He also took over a Resolution Trust processing center that had been criticized as nearly in chaos and later cleared up six months of unreconciled accounts.

He arrived in Orange County on Dec. 12 as head of a rescue delegation from Arthur Andersen & Co., but within 10 days was appointed to the county post. He will be paid the same wage that Citron received, about $8,667 a month.

County supervisors had appointed Citron’s chief aide, Matthew Raabe, as interim treasurer but reportedly became disenchanted by reports that Raabe continued to assure investors that their money was safe, even though the fund was collapsing.

Daxon reportedly has rented an apartment in Orange County and will fly his family here for the holidays.