County Board Cannot Agree on Choice of Health Chief : Supervisors: Six finalists from nationwide search are being considered to run troubled department.

The search for a new Los Angeles County health department director has hit a snag, officials said Wednesday, with county supervisors unable to agree on a choice for the position critical to the restructuring of the troubled department.

The current health director, Robert C. Gates, is scheduled to resign Wednesday, and supervisors had hoped to name his replacement about the same time to start the process of reforming the $2.1-billion department.

The department has long been the target of criticism by supervisors, leading the board to hire Burt Margolin as health czar this year to help oversee the department for six months.

“I think it’s fair to say that there wasn’t one candidate who jumped out at them, where all five [supervisors] felt this was the person,” said personnel Director Mike Henry, who helped organize the nationwide search. “The supervisors were split on different people, so there wasn’t a clear consensus.”

On Wednesday morning, the board spent about an hour in closed session to discuss the problem with its executive search firm, Norman Roberts and Associates, and inquired about other potential candidates, as well as additional background information about the six finalists.

Three of the six finalists run county health systems elsewhere in the state, one runs such a system in Texas, while one operates a private health firm in Chicago and another is a medical director with Los Angeles County’s health department.

Although supervisors could not be reached for comment after their meeting, other county officials said the board would continue to try to hire one of the finalists instead of starting the search again.

“They are going to do everything they can not to take six months to figure this out,” one county official said. “They want to wrap this up in the next two weeks.”

Henry said the search is complicated by the difficulty of the job.

“We are talking about turning around a very large and complicated department, so the board is taking its time,” he said.

A nationwide search was started June 20, about a month after Gates announced his resignation from the health department after serving as director for nearly 12 years. The board had become increasingly impatient with his management of the system, which culminated in a meeting in January when Gates passed out at a board meeting after intense questioning by supervisors.

Although some of the finalists have had success in restructuring smaller health care systems, none has managed a system nearly as large and complex as Los Angeles County’s.

The finalists are: Robert S. Caulk, director of the Sacramento County health department; Nick U. Curry, director of public health in Ft. Worth and Tarrant County, Tex.; Lee Domanico, chief executive officer of the Columbus-Cabrini health system in Chicago; Steve Escoboza, Santa Barbara County’s health department director; Mark Finucane, director of the health department in Contra Costa County, and Jonathan Weisbuch, a Los Angeles County medical director.

On Wednesday, after a brief meeting with the board, Caulk said he is unsure whether he is one of the favored candidates.

“The position is extremely difficult, and I’m not sure the board is going to find one person to handle everything,” he said.

Caulk said that if the position was offered, he first would want to know what kind of system the board wants.

“Do they want to see privatizing or downsizing, are they going to appoint a health authority, and if they do, who would I be reporting to?” he said. “Those are things that I’d need to know.”