Interim CAO Quickly Charts Recovery Course

Less than 24 hours after being hired to bail the county out of its financial crisis last week, Harry L. Hufford began making his rounds.

He met with Auditor Tom Mahon, who has been blamed for not sounding the alarm early enough on the county’s $5-million budget deficit. He called together the county’s department heads, some of whom his predecessor had criticized for playing political games with tax money. He sat down with county lobbyist Larry Siegel, whom he may send to Washington to beg for cash.

If anyone wondered how long it would take the new interim county administrator to grasp the reins of government, he quickly supplied the answer. But what his listeners didn’t know was that, as he moved through the halls of county government, offering his trademark folksy smile and warm handshake to one and all, a plan for his seven months on the job was already taking shape in his mind:

* Learn the county’s roughly $1-billion budget in two weeks, then get to work squeezing dollars from it.

* Begin to look for ways to lobby state and federal lawmakers for help.

* By May, reach a recommendation on whether his successor should be given more power, as his predecessor, David Baker, recommended when he quit after only four days on the job. Hufford says the administrator in Los Angeles County, a job he formerly held, has a little more power in terms of budget decisions, but he says it’s too soon to say whether Ventura County needs to make any changes to the post.

* By June, have a game plan fully in place to solve short-term budgetary problems and long-term structural problems in the county’s bureaucracy.

Expectations are high for the well-respected 68-year-old, who spent 11 years as L.A. County’s chief administrative officer, then returned to that post on a temporary basis in 1993 to begin turning around a $1.4-billion deficit--a figure larger than Ventura County’s entire budget.

But as he made his way around last week, he didn’t seem intimidated.

“I’m pretty determined,” he said, during a conversation in a conference room off the office he will officially move into Jan. 3. “I think this is probably a manageable crisis.”

It appears that if county leaders were looking for someone with crisis-tested experience and a reputation for consensus-building, they had found their man.

Hufford is well regarded by elected and union officials in L.A. County, who describe him as a gentleman and a straight-shooter. The head of Ventura County’s powerful union says he’s heard nothing but good things about Hufford.

But officials also know that beneath Hufford’s gentle demeanor is an experienced number cruncher who is more interested in getting out of the red than making friends. Historically, Hufford hasn’t been afraid to slash budgets and cut jobs, although he isn’t playing up that possibility here.

“You have to ensure the county is solvent, and you have to do what you have to do to ensure that, which could include layoffs,” he said. “But I need to look first.”

After Baker’s sudden resignation, and the six-page letter in which he criticized the county’s budgeting and organizational structure, many local leaders believed Baker had betrayed them, and they were wary of being stung again.

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Barry Hammitt didn’t waste a minute checking up on Hufford. Within a day of Hufford’s hiring, Hammitt, the head of the local Service Employees International Union, which represents 4,200 Ventura County employees, had placed telephone calls to 15 union leaders and attorneys, mostly from Los Angeles, to get an idea of what he could expect.

He liked what he heard. “My colleagues in L.A. have good things to say about him,” Hammitt said.

Early into his tenure in 1993, Hufford warned that close to 10,000 L.A. County jobs might be eliminated. By the end of that year, however, through a combination of a hiring freeze, early retirements, pay cuts and program reductions, no more than 100 employees had been laid off, said L.A. County spokeswoman Judy Hammond.

During Hufford’s time there, department heads actually found a $125-million surplus; the news seemed to anger as many leaders as it pleased, drawing criticism of institutional gamesmanship and putting in question the credibility of those lobbying state and federal officials for help.

State Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) was general manager of the SEIU Local 660 in Los Angeles from 1991 to 1996, and he fondly remembers his interaction with Hufford in 1993.

“With Harry and his people,” Cedillo said, “we worked to save 10,000 jobs, and avoid cuts in salary. We came up with a voluntary time off; they didn’t get paid but they still got their benefits. We moved from overtime to a comp time system.

“Our goals were to protect jobs and services. He was fair and upfront. Before, there was always this suspicion you couldn’t trust the county. With Harry, we didn’t have that sense. I’m not saying he’s a pushover. I’m saying he’s fair. He’s a man of his word.”

Despite Hufford’s ability to stem a crisis in 1993, the county’s finances were too troubled to be resolved in a few months’ time. The crisis came to a head in 1995, when L.A. County was forced to lay off 3,000 health care workers and secure a federal bailout from President Clinton to avoid shutting down county hospitals and clinics.

Leaders in Ventura County are confident that financial problems here are not nearly that grave, and they believe Hufford knows the ins and outs of budgeting well enough that he won’t be intimidated by a relatively small, $5-million deficit.

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Hammitt said Hufford “has a far greater history to draw on than did Mr. Baker, and I get a far more positive and better read from my counterparts on Mr. Hufford than Mr. Baker.

“From our perspective, I guess the question is can he, with this dysfunctional county family we have, forge a consensus and get us down a common road,” Hammitt said. “You’ve got five members of the board, seven elected department heads and 14 appointed department heads that basically operate on a freelance basis.”

Two of the department heads with the most obvious funding at stake--Health Care Agency Director Pierre Durand and Human Services Agency Director Barbara Fitzgerald--did not answer requests for interviews for this story.

Although Hufford was in power when significant cuts were made to the library system in L.A. County, Ventura County Library Director Starrett Kreissman said she believes that is a moot issue here, because libraries are funded directly through property taxes and get no money from the general fund, which finances most county expenses.

Sheriff Bob Brooks, who met with Hufford last week, said he has been impressed so far with what he has seen, including Hufford’s intelligence during a tour of the county’s emergency operations system, where he watched law enforcement officials coordinate the fighting of the wildfires that burned from Ojai to Santa Paula.

“He’s confident in his abilities to lead us through what the county’s dealing with, and given his experience, he certainly inspires that confidence,” Brooks said. “He’s just obviously got an excellent reputation. He’s coming in here as a can-do kind of guy who sees this as a manageable problem, and I don’t doubt at all he’s going to present some recommendations to make it work.”

The five members of the Board of Supervisors, often fractured in recent years, have rallied behind Hufford, saying they will listen thoughtfully to all his recommendations.

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Hufford was not universally embraced by board members in Los Angeles. In 1993, Supervisor Mike Antonovich, the most conservative member of that board, criticized Hufford for not always reflecting the views of the board’s majority. Antonovich declined to be interviewed for this story, and sent word through a spokesman that he wished Hufford the best.

Hufford describes himself as a determined leader who is sometimes stubborn but a good communicator.

“I’m not a my-way-or-the-highway 1/8leader 3/8,” he said. “I’m pretty goal-oriented and I work well with people.”

He said he has a nasty temper sometimes, an admission that didn’t seem to jibe with his self-effacing manner and the fact that he was laughing while describing the temper.

“You don’t want to be in front of me if I’m . . . “--he paused, feigned an angry look and waved a hand in the air--”really teed off.”

The grimace was quickly replaced with a grin.

“I like using a sense of humor,” he said, “to relieve tension and get people to realize, there’s another day.”