Unprecedented Crisis Put Unusual Troika in Charge

Their expertise is in crime and health care crises, but now they’re crunching numbers.

With the largest municipal bankruptcy case in American history swirling around them, these three men--a cop, a lawyer and a health care expert--have been orchestrating massive cutbacks throughout Orange County’s sprawling bureaucracy.

Thursday, the Board of Supervisors instantly approved the $40.2 million in general fund reductions and shifts recommended by the makeshift “Operations Management Council” of Sheriff Brad Gates, Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi and Health Care Agency Director Tom Uram.

For nine days before that, the trio spent endless hours cloistered in a restricted-access “war room” on the fifth floor of the Sheriff’s Department building in back-to-back briefings with dozens of department heads, financial advisers, bankruptcy experts, labor leaders, city officials and even business people eager to help.

Nobody seems sure exactly how they were appointed. Nobody knows when they will finish their task. But nobody else really wants the job.

“This process was intense. We’ve spent nine days almost locked up, doing this on an hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute, day-by-day basis. . . . I didn’t want to do this when I grew up,” said a clearly exhausted Uram, 58, Friday afternoon. “I felt like I was in jail. I was eating jail food. There was a locked door, and there were deputies outside. And I didn’t get any yard privileges either.”

Sources said Uram, who has worked at the county since 1985, was the quietest of the three, often injecting wry humor into the marathon meetings run by Gates.

A longtime county employee, Gates, 55, invariably sat in the middle, with Capizzi on his right and Uram to the left. And Gates generally spoke for the group.

“Brad is the power . . . Brad’s a guy that gets things done,” said County Clerk-Recorder Gary A. Granville. “If you wanted a guy to command an army, he’s the guy you’d pick. . . . Brad is a pounder. If he was on a football team, he would be nose guard.”

The idea for the council sprang from Gates’ constant reminders to Supervisor Roger R. Stanton in the days after the county filed bankruptcy Dec. 6 that department heads were desperate for information. Stanton appointed an 11-member group of agency chiefs, and asked fellow Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez to be the liaison between the board and the group.

Noting the board’s priorities on public health, safety and welfare, Vasquez asked Gates, Capizzi and Uram if they would be willing to lead the effort.

“I can tell you, I didn’t lobby to be on it,” Capizzi, 55, said with a chuckle Friday when asked how the team was formed. “If I can find out who got me on it, there’s some pay-back.”

Granville, one of the 11 on Stanton’s original council, recalled the troika emerging naturally from the larger group’s first meeting Dec. 13: “Like they say in social psychology, if you put 10 people in a room, one of them is going to walk out as a leader. Those are the three best suited.”

Starting Dec. 14, the council began individual sessions with department leaders, scheduling them for times denoted in military fashion on a bulletin board outside the war room. They met both days last weekend and late into each evening.

Each department was to present its money-saving ideas on paper. Some representatives were summoned to the council for a scant 10 minutes; others returned time and again to hash out the numbers. The meetings were precise and all business, sources said. Those who strayed from the subject were quickly reminded of the agenda: cutbacks.

“We were asked to offer up what we could without damaging our ability to do our basic job,” recalled Social Services Director Larry Leaman.

After his 15-minute meeting with the management council early Dec. 16, Leaman said his “entire management team” spent more than 12 hours hammering out a proposal for cuts, finally faxing it to the council about 9:30 that night. “At that time, we all concluded that we were brain dead,” Leaman said.

Most department leaders were not told during the meetings whether their proposals would be accepted.

Finally, the department heads were all called to a 10 a.m. meeting Thursday in the second-floor room in the Hall of Administration where the county’s labor contracts are hammered out. Department heads only, the invitation specified. No seconds-in-command. No support staff. No substitutes.

“I don’t know how they came up with the cuts. I have no idea,” said County Marshal Michael Carona, expressing surprise that some department heads spent hours with the council in repeated meetings, although he had only one session.

Throughout the week, the management council members shuttled back and forth between the Sheriff’s Department offices, where they met with department heads, and the Hall of Administration, where they had continuous briefings from the county’s key financial advisers, former state Treasurer Thomas Hayes, newly appointed Treasurer-Tax Collector Thomas Daxon, bankruptcy attorney Bruce Bennett and county Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider.

As late as Wednesday--only one day before the council made its final recommendations--accountants from the Arthur Andersen firm were in emergency sessions at the sheriff’s building, updating the council on the cash-flow situation. Even Vasquez said he did not learn of the magnitude of the proposed cuts until Wednesday night.

That same evening, the management council met with representatives of the county’s employee associations for the first time.

Summoned to the sheriff’s office at 5:15 p.m., leaders of the county’s more than 20 bargaining units sipped pineapple and grape juice as they waited their turn to be called before Gates, Capizzi and Uram. Bill Fogarty of the Orange County Labor Council said the council’s support staff cleared out and closed the door behind them as soon as he entered.

“The three of them sat on one side (of the table), with Brad (Gates) in the middle. It was Brad’s show,” Fogarty said of the tense, 15-minute meeting. “We didn’t have a discussion. We didn’t have a dialogue. Gates said, ‘When the time comes, we’ll let you know what happens.’ ”

Orange County Employees Assn. General Manager John H. Sawyer emerged worried, but confident that union leaders would be consulted before firm measures were taken.

They were not.

Those who have worked in county government the longest said they have never seen anything like the management council, or heard of a sheriff overseeing budget cuts.

But if the bankruptcy itself is unprecedented, the three leaders reasoned, it calls for an unprecedented response. And the three men said Friday their work is not done.

“What you’re looking at is people who are used to managing a crisis,” Gates said of the council members. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a fire or a riot--or a financial crisis.”

Times staff writers Matt Lait, Julie Marquis, Lee Romney, Tracy Weber and Dan Weikel contributed to this story.