County Government Must Be Made More Responsive

Orange County’s fiscal crisis has passed, but mistrust of government remains. Term limits for the Board of Supervisors, which are on Tuesday’s ballot, are heavily favored, and only 11% of respondents think the supervisors are providing either excellent or even good overall leadership. A whopping 77% rate it as either fair or poor. There’s a message there for the county’s political leadership, and it came home strongly in a recent Times Orange County Poll.

The board long has been a repository of real power in Orange County, and if it has not exactly enjoyed outright popularity, at least it has been a place with some local prestige. In polling earlier in the decade, for example, there was a much lower percentage of people who gave the supervisors a poor job performance.

In December of 1994, the bankruptcy took a good deal of the luster off the job, and the public’s confidence in the board hit the skids. In the spring of 1995, in the heart of the county’s efforts to recover from bankruptcy, only 13% of respondents in a Times survey said that the board’s handling of the county financial crisis was either good or excellent.

Ironically, the hands-off policy that some took on Measure R, the defeated sales tax measure for bankruptcy recovery, did little to enhance esteem of the supervisors. Ill feeling over the financial crisis lingers today. “The sting of the bankruptcy will be around for a long time,” says Supervisor Marian Bergeson, who is now a short-timer, leaving for greener pastures after less than two years on the job.

But even before the bankruptcy, there were signs of the board’s diminishing influence. The question of the future of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station already was a force dividing the county by 1994. The ravages of the recession were taking their toll then too.

Moreover, in a sign of deeper trends at work in the county, rival power was emerging in increasingly assertive local governments. As far back as the spring of 1994, when the county’s investment pool problems were deepening but not well known, the public rated the board’s overall leadership at either fair or poor by a substantial 69%. There was also expressed a sense of fragmentation in the county.

Nor has turnover made a great deal of difference, raising the question of whether the departure of particular individuals really matters a great deal in the way ordinary citizens view the Hall of Administration. Three supervisors who where in office when the county’s investment pool went bust were gone by the time the most recent poll was taken last month. Supervisor Roger Stanton is winding down his tenure. And yet even with new faces and the prospect of more to come, and with the county’s bankruptcy woes largely in the past, the board today still gets disappointing ratings on managing the county budget and on representing the views of local residents.

Today, many residents feel disenfranchised, and not only from the decision-making of the Board of Supervisors. Not all this can be blamed on bankruptcy, either. In 1994, only a handful of respondents expressed a lot of confidence in the ability of either county or city government to deal effectively with such issues such as housing, the economy, crime, immigration, traffic and growth.

Widespread apathy and disappointment felt by the electorate have found expression in government by initiative, efforts to enact term limits and other manifestations of discontent. But there still are things the supervisors can do to bring themselves closer to the voters.

They can take seriously the concerns of voters about overdevelopment; they can bring their meetings to the voters, as they did in Irvine recently; and they can televise them and make them easier to attend. Several leaders of the League of Women Voters make the simple but sensible suggestion that parking be validated for people attending board meetings.

Also, structural change needs to be considered sometime soon. The board districts can be redrawn to make more sense and convey a feeling of true representation.

These survey findings are a barometer only, but they should also be read as a wake-up call. With new supervisors coming on board, and with change in the wind, the time to make county government more responsive is at hand.