This Is No Time for Swelling Egos and Weakened County Executives

It’s going to be a sad day around these parts if our chief executive is forced to resign.

We can only hope the county supervisors see to it that she stays on board.

I’m talking about Jan Mittermeier, the county’s chief executive officer. Her contract is up for renewal soon, and she’s in thorny negotiations with the supervisors on a new one.

You would think, with Mittermeier’s A-plus rating from the board majority, that we’d be talking incidentals. A new office rug, a better parking space, more vacation days.

But no. We’ve made our way into much deeper waters.

Some of the supervisors are convinced Mittermeier wields too much authority. They want her job description changed to reduce her control.

And what will Mittermeier’s response be if they chip away too much at her role? How does that old song go? Take this job and shove it. I ain’t a’workin’ here no more.

Though I happen to like many things about Mittermeier, this really isn’t about her. It’s much too important for us to focus on one individual.

The issue is whether we as a county plan to return to the old days when the supervisors ran everything themselves and the county’s chief executive was the chief pencil pusher. The supervisors played administrators as well as policymakers.

You remember that time--those pre-bankruptcy days.

Those days were born out of a rural county with only a handful of governmental departments, where each supervisor pretty much ran his own district as he saw fit. (We’ve had only two “her” exceptions to the “his” domination of the board.) Who got what jobs depended on who was best at currying favor.

The top staff job was the county administrative officer, who put together the budget, carried out most of the boring work with Sacramento and became the Board of Supervisors’ chief technical advisor.

That was the policy when I came here 18 years ago. The supervisors weren’t about to share much of their power with CAO Bob Thomas. Nor with Larry Parrish, who replaced him, nor Ernie Schneider, who replaced Parrish.

Then came the county bankruptcy in 1994. The supervisors quickly realized that not enough people--themselves included--knew who was on first, let alone what was on second. So with a crisis at hand, the supervisors replaced the weak CAO position with the more powerful chief executive officer. William Popejoy took the role, but moved on after numerous public disputes with the supervisors.

The supervisors turned next, in 1995, to Mittermeier, director of John Wayne Airport. The board agreed to her condition that she have the same powers given to Popejoy.

I don’t profess to be a bankruptcy expert. But many who are credit Mittermeier with playing a major role in leading us out of that quagmire. Even some of her critics have admitted that she has also provided the county with a sound financial blueprint for its future.

So what’s so broke now that we can’t renew Mittermeier’s contract under the same conditions?

Power is not something that any of us give up very willingly. Supervisor Jim Silva, the current chairman, believes it isn’t right for the board not to have final authority on hiring of department heads. He also wants to change her job title from something other than chief executive officer, which he says gives the wrong image of who’s in charge in the county.

Silva would argue that what he suggests is not a reversal to the old ways--those department heads would still have to answer to Mittermeier. And he agrees she should maintain authority for firing them.

But Mittermeier has expressed concern that unless she has total hire/fire control, it would be a false authority. She doesn’t want any department head to think that he or she can do an end run around her to the supervisors.

I asked Mittermeier what changes in her role she would accept and still be content not to quit. The answer: not much.

“If I don’t have the authority necessary to be effective in this job, then there are other challenging options I can pursue,” she said.

What she will accept from the supervisors, she said, are “cosmetic changes.” If they want to change her title--something Silva pushes hard--she can live with that. As long as it’s a title that shows everyone she’s still in charge.

She wasn’t willing to speak to other compromises she would accept, explaining she doesn’t want to negotiate her contract in the newspaper.

Clearly, she wants to stay: “We’ve got the fence holes in place and the concrete poured, so we’ve got the foundation. But we’ve got a lot of work left to do.”

It’s our loss if her position goes under. Unfortunately, we might not realize it until the next crisis comes up.

But Mittermeier doesn’t have the votes to retain all of the status quo. Supervisors Charles V. Smith and William G. Steiner are strongly in her camp, but supervisors Tom Wilson and Todd Spitzer have clashed with her repeatedly and want her powers reduced. That leaves Silva the swing vote. Silva said he hopes Mittermeier will understand that what he wants will not interfere with her job effectiveness.

Supervisor Smith suggests a compromise might be worked out--that perhaps Mittermeier would agree that the board could veto someone she hires, if it’s by a four-fifths board vote. But that might not satisfy Silva.

“It’s very important that we get Jan to stay,” Smith said. “We don’t want to go back to those days when everybody had to answer to five bosses [the supervisors]. Spitzer would like that, because he wants the power.”

Spitzer is Mittermeier’s worst foe on the board. He would fire her if he had his way. All the more reason we shouldn’t go back to the old days. I can’t imagine any department head worth hiring who would want to depend on a loose cannon like Spitzer for job security.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com