Elected Officials Invest in Lesson About Finance : Bankruptcy: About two dozen people attend workshop by a La Palma administrator who specializes in public management.

If finance wasn’t their cup of tea before Orange County’s bankruptcy, they want it to be now.

A group of elected officials from around the Southland participated Friday in a crash course on how to avoid the financial nightmares that plunged the county into an unprecedented fiscal crisis.

“If it hadn’t been for the bankruptcy, I don’t think anybody would be here,” Buena Park Councilman Arthur C. Brown said.

“The majority of elected officials usually say, ‘You’re the expert, bring me what you think is right and I’ll approve it,’ ” Brown said. “That was the old way of doing it. But even the best budget officer makes mistakes sometimes. The buck stops with us. I don’t want to be thrown out of office because of something I didn’t understand.”

Len Wood, La Palma’s interim city manager who has written three handbooks on public management, led the daylong workshop, which was attended by about two dozen officials from Orange, Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

Wood said elected officials usually have very little experience in the area of finance but are required, in some cases, to make million-dollar decisions. He said he intends to fill this educational void by taking his workshop around the state and even to Canada.

There are two main traps inexperienced elected officials face, Wood said. One is when they get bogged down by details and lose sight of the big picture. The other is when they get so complacent that they rely on their staffs to get everything right.

“These are the extremes,” he said. “What I try to do is show them what they should do as an elected official to protect themselves against potential fiscal nightmares.”

Most of the attendees agreed that the scale of the Orange County bankruptcy reminded them of how vulnerable they could be if they do not become better informed.

“When I read about Orange County, I knew if it could happen in Orange County it could happen to any city,” Compton Councilwoman Marcine B. Shaw said. “We’re not on the verge of being bankrupt, but if we’re not careful, we can be.”

One tip that seminar participants took to heart was the suggestion that they form an investment committee made up of elected officials, financial experts and community members.

“As a result of being here today, I will work with our district to form an investment committee because we need to review our investment policy and form a safety guard for the community’s money,” said Joy L. Neugebauer, a board member of Midway City Sanitary District and a former Westminster councilwoman.

While organizers say the workshop was small by design, some participants expressed disappointment that more people did not attend.

“I’m surprised the attendance is so low,” said Buena Park Councilwoman Patsy Marshall, pointing out that a large percentage of council members in Orange County are newly elected. “The day I took office was the day the county went bankrupt. . . . Unless all of (the newly elected officials) are very familiar with the budgetary process, I’m very surprised they weren’t here.”