ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Most of All, Accountability

Whether it’s called re-inventing government or restructuring it, few governments appear to need it more than in Orange County, where the declaration of the nation’s largest municipal bankruptcy has been followed by a stream of worsening financial news. One of the continuing lessons of the fiasco is the need for more accountability by elected officials and the people they appoint.

The county, cities, school districts and other agencies lost more than $2 billion they had invested in bonds. This week, officials announced that the county alone faces a budget shortfall of at least $172 million over the next six months. The county treasurer, whose investment failures led to the bankruptcy, resigned last month, and there is more responsibility to be parceled out in the coming weeks.

But beyond assigning blame, business people, academics, politicians and other residents should seize the opportunity to overhaul government. One promising proposal has been to ask voters to approve changing the form of county government from general law, which is how most counties in the state operate, to charter status, which is the method used in Los Angeles County, San Diego County and some others.

Proponents say that charter status could allow replacing some elected department heads with appointed ones, increasing the county administrative officer’s authority and simplifying the chain of command. Appreciation of the need to build institutional accountability into the political structure is an early legacy of this crisis.

However, as one supervisor correctly noted, changing the form of government would not automatically bar financial debacles. The supervisors already have the power to fire the county administrative officer. Charter status has not stopped department heads in Los Angeles and elsewhere from doing end runs around county chief executives to deal directly with allies on the boards of supervisors. Los Angeles critics have accused past county administrators of being insufficiently forceful; clearly, a mere change of form is not a cure-all. Still, some government restructuring is needed to increase oversight and to reduce the possibility of more fiscal disasters.