Supervisors Say They’ve Learned the Hard Way

It was a $1.64-billion lesson, but it appears the bankruptcy did teach Orange County supervisors a few things after all.

They pay more attention to agendas and less to the political spotlight. They ask more questions of staff and accept fewer excuses. And, they openly debate each other on issues and aren’t afraid to cast opposing votes.

In short, they are taking their jobs seriously. The days of ribbon cuttings, two-hour lunches and 20-minute board meetings are over.

“We’re not taking anything for granted anymore,” Supervisor William G. Steiner said. “There are no more rubber-stamps.”

“We have a different set of standards,” agreed Supervisor Don Saltarelli, who joined the board 10 months ago as it was struggling recover from the bankruptcy. “We’re approaching things much more like a business now.”

But the education of the Board of Supervisors did not come cheap. Along with its billion-dollar-plus price tag, there have been a number of other consequences.

Supervisors are more guarded and secretive than before. They have delegated greater authority to their newly installed chief executive officer and seem more detached from some policy decisions. And, they can’t seem to agree on a consistent governing philosophy on some key matters, such as competitive bidding for government business.

Furthermore, the bankruptcy has taken a toll on civility, with board members occasionally getting downright nasty with one another.

“Relationships have been strained because of the bankruptcy crisis,” Steiner said. “Is it less collegial now? Yes. But does that mean we can’t work together on issues for good public policy? No.”

To the supervisors’ credit, they scrutinize their meeting agendas much more closely these days. It is unlikely that they will approve any more $600-million borrowings on their consent calendars without discussion any time soon.

In fact, when county officials were preparing to go to Wall Street for the money needed to pay off the county’s bankruptcy debts in June, Steiner asked questions and discovered that the county’s financial advisors overestimated the county’s actual needs by $100 million to give the recovery plan a financial cushion.

It was too much of a cushion for supervisors, and the $950-million bond issue was reduced to $850 million. Such second-guessing by the board would have been unheard of before bankruptcy.

Recently, supervisors peppered county staff with questions when it came time to review a preliminary budget. Some board members read the documents so closely that they even found inconsistencies between the budget and an executive summary of the budget. They quizzed department heads on the number of new employee positions being created and criticized the staff for not making the budget document easier to understand.

Although they approved the proposed budget, they warned that significant changes needed to be made if they were going to give the spending plan their final approval in August.

The post-bankruptcy board has also shown little respect for the controversial and long-standing practice of “district prerogative,” which traditionally gave decisions on a particular issue to the supervisor whose district was directly affected.

Supervisor Jim Silva, for example, regularly votes against routine grants to community groups proposed by fellow supervisors. The grants come from a pool of community services funds that supervisors have spent at their discretion in their own districts.

Silva defies his colleagues’ recommendations when the grants are destined for nongovernmental programs, arguing that the board should not be spend money on outside organizations while the county’s finances remain tight.

“That raised a lot of eyebrows. It just was not done before,” one supervisor said.

The change in the board’s dynamics can partly be attributed to the members who have joined the panel since the financial crisis. Supervisors Marian Bergeson and Silva took office less than a month after the bankruptcy was declared, while Saltarelli was sworn in last October.

“I think history will reflect that things started to get drastically better since I arrived on the board,” Saltarelli said. “I’ve opened up the debate. There is much more dialogue.”

Indeed, board discussions have been thrown wide open. Morning meetings that used to adjourn well before lunch before the bankruptcy now frequently last late into the afternoon.

“On most of the crucial issues there is considerable debate nowadays,” said Bob Bennyhoff of Orange, who is one of the few county residents who regularly attends meetings. “It’s a different board. The old members, especially, pay a hell of a lot more attention then they did before.”

But the board’s new attention to duty has a flip side.

“Part of the reason they ask more questions is because they are totally out of the loop,” said one supervisor’s aide, who asked not to be identified. “The CEO does not brief them on county business.”

Compared to former County Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider, who went to great lengths to keep supervisors up to date on issues, CEO Jan Mittermeier has made little effort to keep her bosses abreast of all the details.

Board Chairman Roger R. Stanton said the board has given Mittermeier more leeway because it doesn’t want to “micro-manage things” like it used to.

Critics, however, say Mittermeier doesn’t like her operation to come under too much scrutiny and keeps a tight lid on the release of information, not only to the supervisors but to the public as well.

“One gets the feeling that the CEO gives the board the information the day before the meetings,” said Patricia Harrigan, who monitors the board’s meetings for the League of Women Voters. “I don’t get the feeling that [the supervisors] have a firm grasp of all the facts.”

For example, when Mittermeier unveiled her plan to restructure county government, she gave the board less than 24 hours to review her proposal before she asked that it be put to a formal vote.

Later, she gave the board only four days to examine more than 600 pages of budget documents before it, too, was brought up for board approval.

On one occasion several months ago, Steiner and Bergeson voted against an agenda item, they said, because they didn’t have enough information to fully understand the issues.

Even when the issues seem clear to all of the supervisors, their votes during board meetings can leave people scratching their heads.

“There’s an overall feeling that they are picking their way through a minefield,” Bennyhoff said. “They seem to be more tentative about declaring themselves. And when they do, you still don’t know where they stand.”

The issue of competitive bidding for contracts, for instance, is embraced in theory by all of the supervisors, but not always practiced. In the past several months alone, the board has rejected several competitive bid opportunities.

Consider:

* When it came time to award a contract to study the governmental restructuring, it was not put out to bid, but instead given to a consulting firm that has worked with the county in the past.

* When a team of county employees in the Social Services Department came up with the lowest bid to provide job training and placement services to welfare recipients, the board decided not to accept the proposal because of complaints by the private sector bidder that the process was unfair and the criteria unclear. Instead, the board decided to extend the private firm’s contract for another year and hold a new round of competitive bids at a later date.

* When it came time to negotiate a new operating lease for Mile Square Golf Course, the board passed up an opportunity to invite bids from other potential operators.

Even Bergeson complains that the board lacks a consistent philosophy on many issues.

“It’s very frustrating to me,” she said. “We need to focus more.”

Supervisors are not only having their differences on policy issues, but with personalities.

Where courtesy and civility were once the rule, board members are now becoming more openly antagonistic toward each other.

Among the biggest board rifts, according to many county observers, is the one between Stanton and Bergeson.

County staffers attribute some of the discord to Bergeson’s demand several months ago that a cap be put on legal fees paid for the defense of county officials--including Stanton and Steiner--who have been charged with willful misconduct in office for their roles in the bankruptcy.

Other supervisors also became upset with Bergeson for what they perceived as her grandstanding over the issue of jail overcrowding. Partly as a result, her colleagues voted to study putting a maximum-security jail in her district.

“That was shoved right [back at her],” one supervisor said.

During a debate on term limits, Stanton voted against the proposal, saying it would only bring “a lot of recycled people . . . from other levels of government where [they’ve] been term-limited out.” The comments were widely interpreted as a swipe at Bergeson, who joined the board two years before she would have been forced out of the state Senate because of term limits.

“Sometimes is seems like it’s Bergeson versus the board,” Bennyhoff said. “She’s the odd woman out.”

Bergeson said she, too, has noticed strained relationships with her colleagues.

She said issues such as the defense fee limits are “very personal and tend to make board members sensitive. I think it’s very unfortunate. . . . It has strained relationships.”

But Bergeson and other supervisors tried to downplay the discord, saying that good public policy does not develop without strong debate.

“There’s always disagreement and disharmony,” Saltarelli said. “But there’s not much discord between the supervisors. We respect each others’ opinions.”

Stanton said what some people may view as personal squabbling among board members is actually just “healthy debate. . . . I feel no ill will toward anyone.” He said the heated discussions during board meetings are refreshing compared to the pre-bankruptcy days.

“This board is more comfortable taking contrary positions without worrying that grudges are being held,” he said. “Any time anyone deviated from the norm around here in the past they got slapped down.”

Whether it’s petty sniping or policy debating, the post-bankruptcy board is definitely shaping up to be more interesting than its predecessors.

“I think we have a better board now,” Bennyhoff said. “But if it hadn’t been for the bankruptcy, I don’t think things would have changed. It’s a terrible price to pay for what they should have been doing all along.”

* STILL OUT OF IT: Bankruptcy’s effects linger in county’s incorporated areas. B1