Business Council Aims for a Higher Profile With Choice of Oftelie
Stan Oftelie has an enviable view from his seventh-floor office smack in the center of the county. With a quick pivot, there’s the Big A. The Pond. The Crystal Cathedral.
It’s an unparalleled vista of landmarks linked by some of the very roads Oftelie is responsible for planning, building and improving in the 16 years he’s headed the county’s transportation bureaucracy.
It’s an outlook about to change. Oftelie, 49, announced that he’ll leave the Orange County Transportation Authority next month to become president and chief executive officer of the Orange County Business Council, based in Irvine.
The surprise move signaled much more than a new face at the helm of the council, the county’s dominant business organization representing 1,500 companies that nonetheless has languished as “a knife and fork club,” in the words of one executive.
The placement of Oftelie--a deft political operator among the county and state power elite for more than two decades--indicates the council is gearing up for a higher profile into the next century, both politically and economically.
He may be the person least impressed over what it all means.
“They thought I was a problem-solver,” Oftelie said in his matter-of-fact manner.
“What the business council wants to do is get more involved at the decision-making level with issues that have long-term impact on the community,” he said. “I don’t have all of my strategies worked out, but I know from my experience that if you’re dealing with financial issues and a chief financial officer of a major company says, ‘That’s not the way to go,’ and they show you it’s a bad idea, well, that has great weight.”
The move was heralded by business heavyweights like Gary Hunt, executive vice president of the Irvine Co. and a member of the council’s search team. Hunt set the wheels in motion to snag Oftelie after the transportation chief suggested through an intermediary that he might be interested in the job after former president Todd Nicholson resigned several months ago.
Oftelie, known for his dry sense of humor, was asked what his new role might mean for the county overall--not only for the Gary Hunts, but for the mechanic in Buena Park.
“You mean, what does it mean to one of my uncles?” he said. “No, really, one of my uncles was a mechanic in Buena Park.”
The answer speaks not only to Oftelie’s immersion in Orange County--he’s a proud graduate of John F. Kennedy High School in La Palma and lives in Anaheim, which he calls the “hub of happiness”--but to his street-level sensibility despite the lofty view from his office.
“Look, if you have a community with excellent schools, that is a magnet for the community,” he said. “You want schools to be operated well. That’s a public investment. You want your county government to run well too. We have too many people in county government. When we merged the [Transportation Authority in 1991], we had 1,790 people after the merger and 1,420 people today.
“Has the mechanic’s life been changed by this? Yes. That’s money that was going to too much administration that was directly translated to more transportation services. The money we have in this county can be used much more constructively by redirecting it so people get greater benefit.”
Except for the fact that it’s government doing the spending, it’s a pitch that could come from a conservative’s political handbook. And it’s being delivered by Oftelie, a registered Democrat and past supporter of Robert L. Citron, the former county treasurer whose bad investment decisions cost the county’s investment pool $1.64 billion in 1994.
Oftelie sees no contradiction in his admiration for Citron, his political sympathies and his new job steering an invigorated Orange County business community into the 21st century. He said he’s been “amazed” by suggestions from prominent Republicans that his politics render him incapable of fostering business growth.
“Politics has never been that big an issue with me,” he said. “I know a lot of politicians and I used to work for a county supervisor, but I’ve always been involved in nonpartisan government. I got a call yesterday from the chairman of BIZ-PAC. I didn’t even know there was one.”
Oftelie’s occasionally clueless nature is legendary, as are a litany of other foibles: Fear of flying. Disastrous home repair. A penchant for JCPenney suits despite his Neiman Marcus salary. Bad driving.
Among his biggest fans is his family.
On Friday morning, his son, Steve, 22, woke him up by barking because Oftelie had been labeled a “top dog” in a newspaper story. Also at home are Steve’s twin brother, Andy; Danny, 25, who’ll be married and “officially paid for” in July; and Joe, 14, the family’s soccer standout. His wife, Dee, is an immigration attorney in Fountain Valley. They’ve been married for 27 years. Friends who have known Oftelie over the years aren’t amazed that his career has blossomed from a young journalist making a paltry sum covering the city of Huntington Beach to a salary at his new executive job that neither he nor anyone else involved in the decision will divulge. He has been making $138,000 at the transportation agency.
Asked if it approaches a rumored four-year, $250,000-a-year deal, he grinned. “Not a chance,” he said. “But I don’t mind if that gets spread around.”
