It’s Up to Supervisors

In less than a week on the job David L. Baker proved to be a better watchdog of Ventura County’s financial situation than Auditor-Controller Tom Mahon, who has worked for the county for nearly 30 years.

He proved to be a better analyst of Ventura County’s crippling behind-the-scenes politicking than an army of management consultants.

And he drew up a list of problems that must be addressed if Ventura County is to move toward greater efficiency, financial stability, improved openness and a true chain of authority that more realistically resembles the structure laid out in the county charter.

Baker decided he wasn’t the man to rehab this particular fixer-upper. Maybe that’s too bad, maybe it isn’t. But the important part of the job shouldn’t rest with the hired chief administrative officer anyway.

The real responsibility for leadership in this county rests with supervisors John Flynn, Susan Lacey, Kathy Long, Judy Mikels and Frank Schillo. They are the leaders Ventura County voters elected to steer their county on a straight road to solvent, efficient and forthright government. It is long past the time for them to start taking decisive action to end the fiefdoms, the political end runs and the budget padding that have contributed to the county’s present state of disarray.

This is the moment for these five elected leaders to prove they have what it takes to correct the very real flaws afflicting the management of a county with more resources and advantages than most. If the Board of Supervisors cannot provide strong, clear, unified leadership in the next few months, voters should replace them.

This is no time for business as usual, no time to herd together yet another blue-ribbon committee of the usual suspects to scratch their heads and wonder what’s wrong. Most county leaders already know what needs to be fixed. But they have lacked the courage to act.

Part of the immediate problem is county Auditor Tom Mahon. He’s a pleasant and knowledgeable man, a county government institution, politically well connected, all too gifted at understating troublesome news that demands to be forcefully conveyed. Only after Baker sounded the alarm did Mahon advise the supervisors that “the county is faced with serious financial problems, from both a cash and budgetary standpoint.”

This belated warning is not the work of a vigilant watchdog but of a snoozing lap dog startled awake. Ventura County residents deserve better protection and they should demand it. Tom Mahon has failed in the most important part of his job--the county’s watchdog--and he should step down. A special election must be held to seat an auditor who will keep track of the public’s money as if it were his or her own--speaking up early and loudly at the first sign of waste, fraud or impending deficit.

The biggest debacle to plague Ventura County for the past 20 months has been the aftermath of the Board of Supervisors’ decision to revamp its system of mental health care by merging the Public Social Services Agency with the Behavioral Health Department. This disastrous move--made without adequate public hearings and motivated largely by petty politics--symptomatizes the back-room dealing that has come to mark county decision making. It also created the deep animosities that prompted a whistle blower to expose long-standing fraudulent mental health billing practices, the primary cause of the county’s subsequent--and still mounting--financial trauma.

Supervisors Lacey and Long pushed the merger through, despite warnings from then-CAO Lin Koester and an outside consulting firm, with Flynn casting the deciding vote. Susan Lacey, who will retire after the November election, has one final chance to end her term on a positive note by using her remaining time in office to stop the game-playing and back-room politicking that led to this mess. Likewise, Long and Flynn have until November to demonstrate dramatic courage and leadership on the tough decisions ahead.

In Ventura County, real courage means dealing with Proposition 172. Yes, public safety is the top priority of any government and a large majority of county voters supported the proposition. Its problem is that it defines public safety too narrowly, lavishing so much extra cash on the Sheriff’s Department that the sheriff has commendably returned $30 million in surpluses to the general fund since 1993.

We do not advocate scrapping or undermining Proposition 172, which has helped make what was already a safe county even safer. But the current Board of Supervisors must now bite the bullet and show the courage to amend the ordinance to take away automatic cost-of-living raises that come from the general fund. The supervisors should also authorize use of Proposition 172 funds to support mental health crisis teams, which protect public safety by heading off potential confrontations before guns must be drawn. They should also look at amending Proposition 172 to help fund the desperately needed Juvenile Justice Complex. All of these steps would address very real, very current public safety needs and would be absolutely in line with the spirit of Proposition 172.

Yes, Ventura County is in serious financial straits. (Even Tom Mahon recognizes as much now.) It has been in the hole before, sometimes deeper. But this time the solution is not to simply whack the budgets and payrolls of departments whose leaders don’t have the political clout to fight back. This time the cuts, if needed, must be fairly shared. As a symbolic first step, the supervisors should trim some of the excessive perks of county leaders, such as the thousands of dollars in education bonuses paid to department heads for simply having attended college. Education should be a prerequisite for such top jobs.

Most important: The supervisors must recognize that they have dug this hole for themselves, largely because they fear the repercussions that might come from offending the most politically influential department heads who report to them. They must establish that they are the real leaders of this county. They can no longer tolerate the actions of individual department heads bypassing the chain of command and taking their wish lists to their favorite supervisor.

Until the Board of Supervisors can stand courageously together behind a new chief administrative officer and refuse to undermine that office by dealing directly with other department heads, the county will have a problem that can’t be fixed.