Supervisor Seeks Position on Powerful Water Quality Board

Ventura County Supervisor John Flynn has applied for a position on the state’s most powerful water quality board and plans to leave elected office if he is appointed to the $103,000-a-year job.

Since applying for the post with the State Water Resources Control Board late last year, he has been building a broad base of support for a move to Sacramento, collecting recommendations from state lawmakers, environmentalists and local officials, the 66-year-old Democrat said Thursday.

While there is no timetable for when Gov. Gray Davis is to consider applicants and no assurance that Flynn is in line for the job, his ascension would end a 23-year career as a county supervisor.

“I really love what I’m doing now, but with the election of Gov. Davis, I now have an opportunity to branch out into other areas where I’ve developed some expertise,” said Flynn, who was first elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1972.

“I don’t know if I’m going to be successful,” added Flynn, who earns $71,897 annually as a supervisor. “But if you have experience in a certain area, I believe you ought to share it on a broader basis.”

Flynn’s interest in moving to Sacramento came as little surprise to those who have worked closely with him, noting that he has worked hard to understand complex water issues while helping build statewide coalitions dedicated to water quality and conservation.

Moreover, friends and supporters say Ventura County would benefit by having Flynn in Sacramento, given the array of local issues, including agriculture, development and environmental concerns, regulated by the state board.

“I think with his background on water issues, it would serve California well to have him on the board,” said Thousand Oaks Mayor Linda Parks, who wrote a letter of recommendation to the governor on Flynn’s behalf. “And I think it would be really great to have a representative from Ventura County on the board to give us a larger voice on some of these issues.”

It’s still early in the process and Flynn could hit plenty of stumbling blocks as he tries for a slot on the five-member board, which oversees water quality protection and water rights allocations for the state.

Chief among those is a federal rule that no board member may receive more than 10% of his income, during the previous two years, from any agency that holds a permit to discharge waste water into a river, creek or ocean.

Ventura County is one of hundreds of agencies statewide that holds such a permit. Flynn said that he is aware of the provision and that water board officials are trying to determine whether the rule applies to him.

If Flynn does end up getting the job and leaving the Board of Supervisors midterm, Democratic Party officials said Thursday that it could open the possibility that a Latino will serve as supervisor for the first time since Adolfo Camarillo served from 1906 to 1914.

According to state law, vacancies on the Board of Supervisors are filled by the governor. With a Democrat in power for the first time in 16 years and Flynn’s district encompassing predominantly Latino communities such as Oxnard and El Rio, there is already speculation about who would be next in line.

Hank Locayo, chairman of the Ventura County Democratic Central Committee and a longtime advocate for Latino advancement, said one name already being widely mentioned is that of Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez.

“We know we may be losing a guy who knows his way around the pump,” Locayo said. “But it could be an opportunity for someone else to move up. Every time a person moves up, there’s always a void to be filled, but it’s not like we don’t have qualified people to fill that void.”

Lopez said Thursday that he has heard from many supporters that he might be a natural fit for the supervisor’s job.

“Certainly, I would be interested,” Lopez said. “But a lot of things would have to fall in place, the last one being I would have to be appointed.”

Supervisor Frank Schillo, who also wrote a letter of recommendation on Flynn’s behalf, said he doesn’t believe that any appointment the governor would make to the county board would upset the current balance of power, given that the panel is nonpartisan and already has three Democrats.

“John and I are both proud of the fact that, even though we are not of the same party, we have tried to put party politics out of the picture,” Schillo said. “And I support him now. He has probably forgotten more about water than I know. If anyone should be on the water resources board, it should be him.”

Flynn first was elected a supervisor in 1972, serving four years before losing a reelection bid in 1976. He was elected a second time in 1980 and has been reelected four times since then. He is midway through his present term.

The position that he is seeking on the water board is one that specifically focuses on water quality issues, an area that supporters say dovetails with Flynn’s experience over the years.

During his first term on the Board of Supervisors, he helped organize a group of farmers, politicians and water authorities to keep seawater from seeping into the ground-water supply that is vital to farmers on the Oxnard Plain.

In 1991, he was honored by two statewide groups for his work to create a water conservation coalition between Northern and Southern California. As chairman of the Southern California Water Committee, a group he co-founded, Flynn helped design a blueprint for urban water conservation that could save enough water to serve several million people a year.

And two years ago, Flynn was named the first recipient of the Richard V. Laubacher Water Conservation Award for his innovation and leadership in conservation efforts.

With that kind of record behind him, supporters said they had no problem writing letters of recommendation for the teacher-turned-politician.

“John has solid environmental credentials and nowhere are they stronger than in the area of protecting water quality and making sure there is some water left for environmental uses,” said John Buse, an attorney with the Environmental Defense Center in Ventura.

Added state Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo): “I think he’d be an excellent board member. He would bring a breadth of knowledge and history to water issues, and he has my strong support.”