Baker Provided an Opportunity for Change

Consider David Baker the cheapest consultant Ventura County is ever likely to have.

When Baker walked away from his new job as county chief administrative officer last weekend after only four days on the job, he left behind a six-page letter that shined a harsh light on how Ventura County government does business--and potentially a blueprint for change.

His bill: $0. He said he would even absorb the $2,000 he spent to temporarily relocate. He just wanted out.

Baker, 50, a smart and personable perfectionist with a knack for meticulous detail, said he fled after he discovered the untidy nature of the county’s organizational structure and its messy politics.

But he also raised serious questions about whether Ventura County--once touted statewide as a model of governmental efficiency--should revamp its operations.

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Should Ventura County give its chief executive more authority?

Baker says absolutely. If the supervisors were wise, they would replace the current weak chief administrator--titularly in charge, but not effectively so--with a strong county executive officer.

A strong executive could keep department heads from taking pet projects directly to the Board of Supervisors, he said, undoubtedly thinking of Supervisors Susan Lacey, Kathy Long and John Flynn.

Those three rammed the ill-advised merger of the county’s mental health and social services agencies through the Ventura County board last year over the objections of then-Chief Administrative Officer Lin Koester.

A more powerful executive could also force department heads to provide reliable analyses of issues in time for a detailed review by the chief administrator. That isn’t happening now, Baker said.

Those moves would take politics out of day-to-day county administration.

But plenty of others say Baker’s position is just plain nonsense--the stance of an administrator too rigid to move smoothly from a strong position in San Joaquin County, where the board ceded him extensive power, to a more subservient role in Ventura County.

The structure doesn’t make the difference, they say, the person does. And they cite Ventura County’s own history as evidence.

The star witness is Richard Wittenberg, chief administrative officer in Ventura County from 1979 to 1995 and now county executive in Santa Clara County. He loves the additional power in Santa Clara, Wittenberg said, because it makes his job easier.

“It’s vastly different up here,” he said. “The county charter does not allow a board member to interfere with me.

“But it’s pure silliness to think that an organizational chart counts that much,” he added. “Quite honestly, I’ve worked under both systems, and both systems can work quite well. It’s a matter of personalities. With both a chief administrator and a county executive you need the right chemistry with the board, the right teamwork to solve the problems.”

Acting Chief Administrative Officer Bert Bigler thinks either structure can work. He came to work for Wittenberg in 1980, a year after county supervisors ousted powerful County Executive Monty Lish, weakened his position and shifted that power back to the elected board.

“Richard’s style was definitely different than what I heard about Monty Lish,” Bigler said. “He had very good interpersonal skills and worked very well behind the scenes.”

Lish, an executive with a worker safety group near Seattle, said he would tend to agree with Baker about the need for a strong executive.

“My bias is if you don’t want an administrator who is manipulative and political, you want a strong administrator,” he said. “That keeps the administrator professional and leaves the politics to the politicians.”

Author Bill Fulton, publisher of a government and planning newsletter, said California counties need strong executives because a chief administrative officer is just a “glorified political traffic cop,” and big problems sometimes occur when power is too diffuse.

“When there’s too many cooks in the kitchen, people go in too many directions and government is too decentralized,” he said. “And that was one of the problems in Orange County that caused [its 1994] bankruptcy. [The treasurer] was an elected position and no one paid attention to what he did.”

Fulton said that Sally Reed, former chief administrator in Los Angeles County, left for a job paying less $70,000 as head of the Department of Motor Vehicles partly because she was so fed up with her lack of authority.

Indeed, there is plenty of support for a stronger executive in Ventura County. Supervisors Judy Mikels and Frank Schillo have expressed interest in the idea. Other officials are reluctant to speak publicly because they have to deal with the supervisors and fear their comments will be taken as criticism of the board.

“That entire letter was a criticism of the leadership of the board,” one manager said. “They’ve emasculated the CAO, and for years the CAO’s office has told department heads to make their pitch to the board. They’ve realized they’re out of the loop. It’s a dysfunctional culture and you either play the game or you lose.”

So the answer is, sure, the chief administrator should have more power if the supervisors want to cut out some of the internal politics of county government and increase its efficiency.

Baker was probably right.

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Should the county auditor’s role be weakened?

Baker says supervisors should reduce the role of the auditor-controller in budget planning and preparation “because the auditor’s office plays too much of a policy role, rather than an accounting role.” There is too much reliance on the auditor for fiscal forecasting and debt financing, he said.

Even for those who agree with most of the rest of Baker’s analysis, this recommendation seemed a back-handed slap at Tom Mahon. It implied that Mahon, a genial man who goes about his duties in a gentlemanly fashion, had seized powers not rightfully his.

And that is just not Mahon. The real question, in fact, should be whether he has adequately carried out his duties as the county’s fiscal watchdog.

“Tom Mahon does not go after power,” Wittenberg said. “Tom’s 100% honest and a straight shooter.”

If fact, Mahon has been criticized most frequently since taking office in 1990 for being a toothless watchdog, not a power monger. His practice is to issue pointed preliminary audits that are not made public, allow targeted officials to fix their problems and then issue a public report on the fixed problem. That is contrary to the way many auditors do the job, but Mahon says it works.

“I’m a watchdog, but I take a slightly different approach,” Mahon said. “When you blast someone, there’s a tendency to circle the wagons. We try to get the concurrence of the people to correct the problem.”

Mahon may be be loaded down now with budgeting duties, but some of those are jobs that were performed in the chief administrator’s office until tight times prompted supervisors to cut the positions.

“The auditor’s only doing what the previous CAOs asked him to do,” said Barry Hammitt, executive director of county government’s largest labor union.

According to Bigler, the CAO’s budget team had nine members in 1989, but has only five today. And that is not enough to do the kind of detailed analysis that Baker wanted. In a letter the board will consider Tuesday, Bigler echoes Baker in recommending that the board give the chief administrator stronger control of how department heads spend their money.

But Bigler also says that he works hand-in-hand with Mahon. Mahon says the process works well. The departments’ budget updates go to both.

“We both do analyses, and see if we agree or disagree,” Mahon said. “We look at it from a financial perspective, and they have a much stronger programmatic perspective. And generally it’s the CAO recommendation that determines what we do. As far as I’m concerned, I’m not involved in policy.”

It is ironic, if fact, that when Mahon stepped out of his usual cautious posture last week to publicly comment about the county’s dire cash-flow problems, he was criticized by Supervisor Schillo for not sounding the warning sooner, and by others for sounding the warning at all.

“I’d hoped this [warning] letter would be submitted through Mr. Baker,” Mahon said. “But, unfortunately, when I came in to meet with him Monday morning, he’d resigned.”

So does the auditor have inordinate power beyond the intended scope of the office? Yes, but by default.

And if the Board of Supervisors wants to make department heads more accountable--force them to explain excess spending and meet spending goals--then the supervisors should give the CAO the manpower to do the job right in the executive office.

That would also help stop what Baker called “dysfunctional budget game playing.” That includes the current practice of padding department budgets with unfilled jobs, so officials can have a ready stash of cash when they need it. It might also end the onerous practice of forcing department heads to pay for wage increases not in their budgets by scrimping on other things.

Baker blew some of the details, but again his central point that financial planning should be centralized is a good one. If he had stuck around long enough to learn the history, he might also have recommended that the auditor sound warnings more forcefully and more publicly when the county has a problem that needs to be fixed.

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Should county supervisors stop guaranteeing budget increases for public safety?

Baker says the county should change how it implements Proposition 172, the state initiative that provides sales tax to law enforcement agencies, because the current ordinance enriches public safety at the expense of other community programs.

“The public safety ordinance presents a structural financial imbalance which is dramatic and ongoing. . . . [And] the balance of services over time will be negative if not altered.”

Few officials seem interested in tinkering with this sacred cow. After all, support for law and order is a byword in the safest county in the West. And the endorsements of Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury and Sheriff Bob Brooks are treasured plums for elected officials and candidates opposing them.

Two years after the 1993 statewide passage of the half-cent sales tax, Ventura County became the only county in California to dedicate that money--now $40 million a year--exclusively to law enforcement.

That seemed in tune with the 60% local voter support of the initiative, and it was an answer to the pillaging of the law enforcement fund going on in other counties.

But Ventura County included in its ordinance a provision that even some law enforcement officials will acknowledge raises legitimate questions. The ordinance requires officials to dip into the general fund to pay inflationary costs in equipment and supplies as well as salaries and employee benefits.

“I’m as comfortable as can be with [Proposition] 172 funds being dedicated to law enforcement,” said one county law enforcement official. “It’s harder to defend the additional commitment of general fund money.”

The supervisors could repeal or alter the ordinance by a simple majority vote.

But only Supervisor Lacey, a strong social services advocate who retires next year, wants to reopen the Proposition 172 debate.

Supervisor Flynn, the swing vote on the Proposition 172 implementation ordinance in 1995, also says he would like to talk with law enforcement officials about expanding the areas where Proposition 172 money can be used.

Sheriff Brooks, whose department gets two-thirds of the windfall, said he is sensitive to countywide needs, and has returned $30 million over six years to the general fund. And last week, when Mahon raised questions about how to pay the county’s share to build and operate a much-needed new juvenile facility, Brooks said Proposition 172 money could be used to staff and operate it.

But Brooks and Assistant Dist. Atty. Greg Totten said last week that they don’t want to change the county’s Proposition 172 ordinance at all.

So should the supervisors reconsider Proposition 172 issues, especially the inflation clause that can siphon off general fund money?

Baker was right in saying it is a legitimate issue that should be fully debated again.

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Is Baker a courageous leader or a quitter who should have finished what he started?

Given the county’s “overwhelming problems” and the Board of Supervisors’ lack of political will to fix them, he said, he would likely ruin his own health and family life by staying.

So he packed his bags, faxed his resignation and went home to Stockton, prompting cracks about a now-you-see-him, now-you-don’t administrator, a “Four-Day Baker.”

Many county officials say he just wimped out--that he should have given the fractious five-member board a chance to respond to his recommendations. Then, if the board had no stomach for change, he could have walked. Indeed, supervisors said they hired him to help fix the very problems he cited in his letter of resignation.

Instead, he left a blistering letter that declared the county “near fiscal chaos” and the supervisors bound to business as usual. Some of his observations have already proven to be flawed, based on partial information.

Still, several local officials, including three supervisors, said some of Baker’s conclusions--although essentially a condemnation of county leadership--have merit and should be debated.

“I think we were fortunate to have him even for a short time,” said Schillo, the supervisor who remains most impressed with Baker. “He did an in-depth study of our financial picture and offered that at no cost to the county. His legacy is a list of what we need to address. It’s the shortest legacy I can imagine, but now we have a real opportunity for county government to make needed changes.”

Tax Collector Hal Pittman said Baker, although shooting from the hip, was right about some things.

“To be right on everything in [four days] would be almost impossible,” Pittman said. “He’s got some good points, but we were already aware of many of them, and we were working on them. This just brings them to the forefront.”

What it comes down to is that Baker has served as a lightning rod. He had the courage to spotlight problems that need to be debated openly. But he should have stayed to deal with them himself.