ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Now Supervisors Have the Ball

Several members of the Board of Supervisors and the opponents of the defeated sales tax will now be without the strong-willed William J. Popejoy to blame for any glitches in the bankruptcy recovery. An interim county executive officer, Jan Mittermeier, has been selected.

The supervisors wanted things done their way, and now, with the apparent removal of “the clash of egos” as an excuse for stalled recovery, comes a renewed burden for the board to deliver the county from its predicament. The selection of Mittermeier, a veteran county administrator, no doubt provides a measure of stability. She has been with the county a long time, most recently as airport director, and is respected. That ought to provide some needed equilibrium during a transition period to a permanent appointment.

However, despite the assurance Mittermeier said she got from supervisors that the job would be essentially what it was under Popejoy, it is clear that the assignment is not really a high-profile position anymore. Mittermeier is a known quantity, but she is unlikely to have the inclination or the running room to create friction over policy disagreements as did her predecessor.

That may be good for the bruised egos of supervisors, but there’s no guarantee that it is good for the county. Sooner or later, preferably sooner, the county must shed the image of business as usual.

Even in the short term, Mittermeier will have her work cut out. Additional reductions are needed now that the sales tax has failed, and the county recently has encountered some new obstacles. These include the order by a federal district judge to set aside money to pay up to $169 million in debt to creditors and the likelihood of further delay in the county’s $2-billion lawsuit against Merrill Lynch & Co.

What’s more, while the county does have a firm conducting the search for a permanent executive, the process is not as far along as it should be at this point. It is time to get moving.

All that still leaves the county with a large task of recovery ahead, and the supervisors clearly bear responsibility for making that happen.