Ex-Finance Director’s Case to Go Behind Scenes in O.C.

A lawsuit by former County Finance Director Eileen T. Walsh alleging sexual harassment and discrimination finally is headed for a civil jury this week, two years after it was filed and nearly three years after Walsh was demoted to the county’s trash department.

The lawsuit promises a rare, gritty look into the inner workings of county government during the height of its disastrous December 1994 bankruptcy. Walsh paints an unflattering portrait of a vindictive “good old boy’s network” in charge, using the bankruptcy’s power vacuum to settle personal scores.

The witness list includes a lineup of former and current county officials, including Health Care Agency Director Tom Uram, a co-defendant with the county, and former Supervisor Roger R. Stanton.

County officials have denied Walsh’s allegations and declined to comment on the reasons for her demotion. Norm Watkins, a private attorney defending the county in the lawsuit, didn’t return a call seeking comment.

“It’s a grenade,” Clerk-Recorder Gary L. Granville said of the trial’s impending testimony. “I know there’s a great deal of concern about it. It’s like, here comes another potential black eye for county government and its leadership.”

Walsh’s attorney, Steven J. Kaplan, contends that county officials retaliated against Walsh because she was quoted in a Times article in the wake of the bankruptcy, and because Uram, who acted as county administrator temporarily, had a history of antagonism toward her.

Walsh declined to be interviewed.

In the past month, she was transferred to the county’s Prima Deshecha Landfill in San Juan Capistrano, where she works in a trailer doing mostly secretarial tasks for her $75,420 annual salary, Kaplan said. The transfer came as Walsh filed paperwork to run as the employee representative on the Orange County Retirement System’s board of directors. The mail-in ballots will be counted next month.

Kaplan called Walsh’s work situation “offensive” and further evidence of the county’s discriminatory attitude toward its former finance official. She is taking vacation time to attend the trial.

The case originally was scheduled to be heard in June before Superior Court Judge Ronald L. Bauer but was postponed because of courtroom overcrowding.

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Walsh was suspended from her executive-level job literally hours after Uram was named interim county administrator in January 1995. Her boss, County Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider, had been placed on administrative leave a day earlier, and was fired a month later by incoming County Executive Officer William J. Popejoy.

In mid-February 1995, Uram demoted Walsh from her $93,393-a-year job, cut her pay and sent her to the Integrated Waste Management Department as an administrative manager under then-Director Murry L. Cable. Walsh said the move violated a signed employment agreement and, because of its timing, implied that she was culpable in the bankruptcy. Her lawsuit contends Walsh was blameless and had no involvement in the risky investments of former Treasurer Robert L. Citron that led to the county’s financial collapse.

Moreover, Walsh had complained repeatedly about Cable’s unflattering comments about women, including sexually derogatory remarks about Walsh and former Supervisor Harriet M. Wieder. Her lawsuit contends that she and Uram also clashed in the years after she was hired by the county in 1979, and that he made derisive remarks about her gender.

Walsh’s suspension came two days after she was quoted in a Times article saying that she had been ordered by Cable to add a Santa Monica-based financial advisor to a list of qualified consultants for county bond contracts. The request allegedly came from Stanton through Cable, who retired in 1995 and died earlier this year.

The Times story examined how investment bankers, financial advisors and bond attorneys seeking county business had given generously to political campaigns in the county--a system dubbed “pay-to-play”--including those of Stanton, then chairman of the Board of Supervisors, and Stanton’s aide, Robert Richardson, running for a seat on the Santa Ana City Council.

The lawsuit contends that Stanton found out about Walsh’s quote and demanded that she retract it before the article ran. She refused. Stanton, through his attorney, denied that he asked her to retract the quote and said he had nothing to do with placing financial advisors on the county list.

Schneider testified in his deposition for Walsh’s suit that Stanton ordered him to fire Walsh in early January because of the impending article, and that he refused. He said Uram’s subsequent demotion of Walsh and ordering her to report to Cable “was a strategy to force Eileen out.”

Schneider said he’s not happy about testifying at the trial, though he remains among Walsh’s staunchest defenders. He was her supervisor for five years as she handled bond issues for construction projects and reviewed claims alleging wrongdoing by the county.

“I think they’re going to try to paint a bad picture of Eileen, and I’m not looking forward to it,” said Schneider, now an executive with an Irvine engineering and planning firm.

County attorneys estimate the trial will take five weeks. Walsh is asking that she be reinstated to an executive management position in the county executive office or that she be returned to an earlier job as program manager for the Health Care Agency.

The suit asks for unspecified damages for her removal from the CAO’s office.