Popejoy Rested, Eager to Get O.C. Back in Balance

His dentist called to see if he would have to cancel next week’s appointment. A labor-relations specialist he worked with 30 years ago offered a helping hand. Strangers at the corner sandwich shop congratulated him. And a friend sent his wife a bouquet of flowers with the message: Every woman knows who is really in charge.

Such was William J. Popejoy’s first day on the job as bankrupt Orange County’s chief executive officer, a sunny Saturday he spent mostly on the telephone, trying to catch up.

“I’m not tired. I’ve not worked full time for quite awhile. I’m ready,” mused the suntanned, silver-haired Popejoy, 56, as he fielded calls at his 4,500-square-foot, $856,000 home in the gated Newport Beach community of Belcourt.

“The parameters of the problem, I knew going in. But there are details I’m still learning. The personalities (of county leaders and consultants), I’m still learning,” Popejoy said. “They don’t know me. I’m still an unknown quantity to them. I plan to earn their respect--I don’t plan to just get it.”

Tapped by the county’s Board of Supervisors for the six-month post late Friday afternoon, Popejoy--who plans to donate his salary back to the county--said he was on the phone with officials until 10 that night. He stayed up late Friday poring through paperwork about Orange County’s unprecedented Dec. 6 bankruptcy filing, and had already read a stack of newspapers Saturday before the first call came at 6:30 a.m.

By 8 a.m., Popejoy had spoken with Tom Uram, the health-care chief who filled the county’s top job for a few weeks after County Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider was demoted for mishandling the ongoing crisis.

Popejoy then tracked down Supervisor William G. Steiner, who was baby-sitting his grandchildren in Corona, and asked for the home phone numbers of Supervisor Jim Silva and County Counsel Terry C. Andrus. By day’s end, the interim CEO had chatted with each of the supervisors and a handful of county department heads, and had arranged to meet in Los Angeles today with some of the outside lawyers working on the bankruptcy.

Between telephone conferences, an Orange County sheriff’s deputy stopped by for an hourlong, tape-recorded security briefing, his 9-year-old grandson came for a visit, and Popejoy took his wife’s car out to fill it up with gas.

He has yet to see his third-floor office at the Hall of Administration in Santa Ana, or receive a written outline of his duties and responsibilities.

“I’m not against going into the office,” he explained during an interview in his home. “I just don’t know where it is.

“I know what a CEO is. The job description doesn’t concern me. I’m not waiting for a job description to go to work.”

Most supervisors and county staff, who have been struggling with the fallout from the financial crisis for more than two months, planned to take this weekend off, but Popejoy was eager to get going.

“I’m not a person who calls meetings just for the sake of doing so,” he told Andrus over the phone late Saturday afternoon. “But I thought we could have a telephonic-type meeting.”

Popejoy, who beat out two corporate turnaround specialists--Sanford C. Sigoloff of Los Angeles and B.J. Rone of Dallas--for the temporary post, offered few specifics Saturday about his plans to help rescue the county.

He said that avoiding default and repaying bondholders is his top priority. Reassuring the 186 schools, cities and special districts with money in the county’s collapsed investment pool “that we intend to make them whole” is a close second, he added.

Within the county, Popejoy said there will have to be cuts, but not solely for the sake of cutting. “There’s a place for government. I’m not against government,” he said. “I’m against excessive government.”

Popejoy also said he would not assemble a large crisis-management team, probably selecting just two or three people--county staffers or volunteers from outside--to be his top aides.

“One of the worst things in the world is having four or five people swarming around the CEO and people don’t know who they’re supposed to talk to,” he quipped. “Most committees of administrative assistants create crises, they don’t correct them.”

Popejoy said an important challenge in the coming days will be finding grass-roots support among various ethnic groups, neighborhood organizations and citizen activists throughout Orange County.

While the business community has recently taken a leadership role in the financial fiasco, brokering a repayment plan for participants in the county’s failed investment pool, other community groups have not yet had much opportunity for involvement.

“If you don’t have community support, the best staff, the best lawyers, and the best advisers can’t do it,” Popejoy said. “If we don’t have the best lawyers, we’ll get them. If we don’t have the best advisers, we’ll get them. But community support is the necessary ingredient.”

The new CEO said he and the supervisors would have to do a better job of communicating the problems and their proposed solutions than officials have done since the crisis began.

“In the (six-month) time span, we can’t debate and listen, and debate and listen, but we can do a lot more outreach,” he explained. “That doesn’t mean we’re going to go out and take a poll of what we should do. But we can go out and tell people what we’re going to do.”

While his five years as CEO of the failed American Savings and Loan in Irvine were perhaps the best preparation for his new post, Popejoy said his experiences as a union shop steward and gas-station attendant are crucial to his work philosophy.

And Popejoy’s long-ago season as starting fullback on the Cal State Sacramento football team also provided training for Orange County’s rescue effort.

“A lot of people laugh at football players. And some of them deserve to be laughed at. But the football experience is important,” Popejoy said. “You have to work hard. You have to get banged around. You have to have a plan. And you never give up.”