Primed for Tough Choices

If Ventura County government looked like an impenetrably thorny briar patch to David L. Baker, its tangle of stealth budgeting and back room alliances should feel more familiar--if not entirely comfortable--to Harry L. Hufford.

Hufford is the county’s new interim chief administrative officer, unanimously hired by the Board of Supervisors to spend the next seven months straightening out Ventura County’s financial crisis and, an even bigger challenge, bringing greater openness and accountability to an operation too reliant on secrecy and cronyism.

It’s a role Hufford has played before.

Hufford, 68, served as CAO of Los Angeles County from 1974 to 1985, then left to become a top administrator for the big L.A. law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. In 1993 the Los Angeles County Supervisors asked him to come back on an interim basis while they searched for a permanent replacement for CAO Richard Dixon, who had lost the board’s support.

Hufford returned amid a far larger financial mess than the one Ventura County currently faces--a deficit of $845 million compared to Ventura County’s projected $5 million shortfall--and earned high praise for pulling Los Angeles County’s $13-billion bureaucracy through its worst fiscal crisis since the Depression.

In the process Hufford survived a number of encounters that should serve him well in Ventura County, including tough negotiations with the powerful county employees union and confrontations with a politically potent district attorney and Sheriff’s Department.

Hufford is widely respected for his personal integrity and forthrightness, and for being a hard-working, self-effacing public servant. During his decade at the helm of Los Angeles County government he held weekly Monday morning meetings with the Hall of Administration press corps, candidly discussing hot issues. When he returned temporarily in ‘93, one of his first acts was to unlock the security doors Dixon had installed in the hall outside his office to keep the public at bay.

Hufford owes nothing to any of Ventura County government’s entrenched fiefdoms. His attitude toward the chief administrative officer’s job is reflected in a comment he made about Los Angeles County CAO Sally Reed when she resigned in 1996: “If you make hard decisions in this day and age--and that is a job where you do that--you don’t always make friends. That’s for sure.”

We welcome Harry Hufford and his zeal for candor and openness to Ventura County government. And we congratulate the Board of Supervisors for sticking to its plan and bringing in an experienced outsider to tighten the county bureaucracy’s belt and restore order to budgeting procedures that have grown far too casual.

May the five supervisors continue to stand together and to stand behind Harry Hufford as he makes those hard decisions.