O.C. Reform: There Are Ways; Is There Will?

A plethora of proposals for reinventing Orange County’s post-bankruptcy government have but one thing in common: Something needs to be done.

County Supervisor Marian Bergeson has proposed eliminating her own full-time job, and those of the other county supervisors, and turning the board over to part-timers who are paid a stipend instead of an $82,000 salary.

The local branch of the California League of Cities wants a powerful county executive officer who supervises department heads, while a citizen activist advocates scrapping that idea and installing a public oversight committee for each agency.

Supervisor Roger R. Stanton insists that the board should have hiring and firing power over the county treasurer and assessor, but others say only the voters should decide who should stay and who should go.

These are but a few of the proposals being bandied about these days for the more efficient and cost-effective government that many say is needed in the wake of the largest municipal bankruptcy in U. S. history.

But with Orange County on the road to extricating itself from bankruptcy court, some wonder if its legislatively approved recovery plan relieves the pressure to overhaul and streamline county government, or whether the competing plans will ultimately stand in the way of progress.

“I think the chances for reforming and restructuring in Orange County government are slim to none,” said Mark Baldassare, professor of urban planning at UC Irvine. “In the context of the recovery plan’s success, once the urgency is eliminated, I think it’s very unlikely that there will be any change from the status quo.”

But outgoing Supervisors Chairman Gaddi. H. Vasquez said such naysayers will be proved wrong. He says that slashing the county’s discretionary budget spending by 41%, laying off more than 850 employees and eliminating more than 2,000 positions in county government will alone lead to the smaller, more efficient government the citizenry is demanding.

“It’s going to be a different future,” said Vasquez, who said he intends to remain active in the restructuring effort long after he formally leaves office on Wednesday. “Not too long from now, you’ll look at Orange County and it will be very different.”

Orange County sought bankruptcy court protection from its creditors last Dec. 6, after discovering that its investment portfolio had lost a staggering $1.7 billion.

After struggling for months with a succession of plans from A through E and other, unlettered ones between, the county declared victory when the Legislature embraced a “consensus recovery plan” it had hammered out with the governmental agencies which were owed county money.

Suddenly, the county would no longer guarantee that the 200 cities, schools and local agencies that put their money in the county-run investment pool would get back 100% of their investments, and four county agencies--including the Orange County Transportation Authority--were surrendering their claims to $810 million in revenues the county will use to repay its non-governmental debts.

The county’s financial fiasco sparked unprecedented criticism from every quarter, and demands for reform or change at nearly every level of government. After months of formal inquiry, the Orange County Grand Jury said a string of failures by the Board of Supervisors was largely to blame for the financial disaster.

Vasquez said those skeptical of change have overlooked what is already underway since the bankruptcy.

The county has merged Integrated Waste Management with the Environmental Management Agency, and brought a countywide communications system under the oversight of the Sheriff’s Department. More is to come, Vasquez promises.

Just this past week, the Board of Supervisors voted to overhaul the budgeting process in an effort to cut waste and increase efficiency and accountability.

The supervisors also have appointed a 33-member panel that hopes to organize a March election that could dramatically change the way the county is governed, Vasquez said.

“No one should conclude that now that this [recovery] legislation has passed, that we could continue to operate in the same way,” he said.

But some critics fear that change will forever remain just over the horizon--and say the evidence is there to prove that the county is dragging its feet.

A task force studying how the EMA could privatize its varied services is making little progress, while some members openly wonder whether the task force is even needed, said task force member and citizen activist Patrick Quaney.

“They think that since the bankruptcy is almost over they can stall us and we’ll forget about restructuring.” Quaney said. “We won’t.”

A proposed management audit aiming at a streamlined county government has also fallen by the wayside, after the Price Waterhouse accounting firm took the unusual step of withdrawing from a contract worth more than $300,000--in part because it felt there was little county support for the effort.

But county officials disagree.

They point to the work of the Orange County Charter Commission, which is studying whether supervisors should be part-timers and whether their power should be diluted by an expansion of the board’s membership. The commission is collecting public input on those and other issues it will put before voters in March to give them greater say in how the county is governed.

As a result, the commission has become a clearinghouse of sorts for reorganization proposals. On the topic of the board’s makeup alone, the commission has 13 competing proposals.

Some key plans:

* Bergeson’s Orange County 2001 project would expand a part-time Board of Supervisors to nine members, make all but the sheriff and district attorney appointed posts, shift many of the county’s current duties to cities or the state, and encourage the annexation or incorporation of county lands. Her plan also would create a powerful chief executive officer to oversee regional county services such as health and transportation.

* Stanton’s proposal also would help the county shed many duties that could be handled by the state and cities and reorganize special districts to foster efficiency and eliminate duplication.

* The grand jury also has issued three reports blasting what it sees as a disturbing lack of accountability in county government. The grand jury’s reports calls for changing the government by making supervisors part-timers, revamping its financial oversight process to provide greater accountability, and centralizing county power with a chief executive officer.

* The local branch of the California League of Cities and the influential Orange County Business Council find themselves in opposition to the board in their support for an assessor who is elected, not appointed, to give the ultimate authority to voters. But the supervisors, who blamed the county’s bankruptcy on the independence of an elected county treasurer, want such officials to be appointed.

* Supervisor Jim Silva, a member of the charter commission, said he intends to downsize county government and save taxpayers money by focusing on efforts to privatize government services and consolidate county agencies. “We need to do things differently around here,” Silva said.

Todd Nicholson, the president of the business council that brokered the bankruptcy settlement plan, says now that the plan appears to be in place the lobbying process will begin. There are many ways the ideas can be put to work, through a board motion, public election through the charter commission’s effort, or even a public initiative.

“The public is demanding change, and now is the time to do it,” Nicholson said.