Tough Challenge Awaits New County Chief

By all accounts, Ventura County government’s newest chief administrator is the Dudley Do-Right of local government.

David L. Baker’s life motto, says his parish priest, is “Do good and avoid evil.”

He regularly put in 14-hour days as the top bureaucrat in San Joaquin County. He had kind words and high expectations of the county’s 6,500 employees. He also kept close watch over its $700-million budget. And he somehow stayed on the good side of five county supervisors who frequently battled each other.

“He’s a decent, hard-working human being,” said Dario Marenco, one of Baker’s former bosses on the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors. “Ventura County got a great deal.”

Baker, 50, is to begin work in Ventura County today. He was not available for comment last week because he and his wife, Susan, were busy moving their belongings down south.

But people who know him well in Stockton, the San Joaquin County seat, describe a modest man who is analytical, compassionate and adept at navigating political fights.

Those qualities will come in handy in Ventura County, where county government has been shaken the past year by battles for control of the mental health agency. One of Baker’s top priorities will be to keep the county on sound financial footing as it seeks ways to pay $15.3 million back to the federal government for a mental health billing scandal.

He must also play peacemaker to a Board of Supervisors badly split over the mental health debacle and heal wounds still festering between managers and employees in the Behavioral Health Department.

Maintaining economic growth in a region laced with growth-control laws and finding a new source of revenue to revive the county’s harbor and parks are other challenges he faces.

In an interview last month, Baker said he looked forward to the job ahead.

“My career has been devoted to problem-solving in county government,” he said.

San Joaquin County had its own battles over health care in recent years. On a 3-2 vote, supervisors directed Baker to look at bringing in a private partner to help run the public hospital, officials there said.

For months, Baker struggled to find a private health care group willing to form a partnership with San Joaquin General Hospital, said Douglass Wilhoit, a former county supervisor. But protests by the county’s labor unions and the two supervisors opposed to the pact became so heated that private companies eventually backed off and the deal was killed, Wilhoit said.

“Dave was trying to find a new way to do business, and labor reacted before they got the whole story,” Wilhoit said. “Nobody was going to be laid off. . . . Dave’s been through those wars, he knows how to handle it.”

Baker also leaned hard on two cities attempting to expand redevelopment districts, a move that would have drained taxes from the county’s treasury. The county filed suit against the cities and Baker was part of the negotiations, said Gary Podesta, the mayor of Stockton, which was not involved in the suit.

“They were able to settle that without going to court. And that was because of him,” Podesta said.

Baker has the respect of many because he is a man of his word, said Marenco. In negotiations with unions, for instance, he will be up front about what the county can offer. And in his relations with San Joaquin supervisors, he always did his homework and made recommendations on what he saw was best for the county, Marenco said.

“There were issues where I didn’t agree with him, but he played it straight,” Marenco said. “You cannot find an instance where he wasn’t fair.”

Adds Wilhoit: “He will tell the board what they have to hear, not what they want to hear. But if the board goes in the opposite direction, he will make it work.”

Baker will earn $158,000 a year to guide Ventura County’s billion-dollar budget and its 7,200 employees. That is a $30,000-a-year pay boost over his previous job, which he held for five years.

But money was not the only lure. This county’s population is larger and wealthier than San Joaquin’s and has a rural and urban mix that Baker has said he finds appealing.

Ventura County also brings him closer to his youngest daughter, who is enrolled at UC Irvine, and relatives in San Diego. Baker has two other adult children, colleagues say. The Rev. Michael Kelly, Baker’s pastor for 12 years, said Baker combines a strong work ethic with devotion to his family and his Catholic faith.

Baker invited Kelly to give the invocation at his going-away dinner in Stockton two weeks ago, the priest said.

“David is a deeply spiritual person,” he said.

Bert Bigler, who has been filling in as Ventura County’s interim administrator, said he looks forward to working again with Baker. They worked together in San Bernardino County in the late 1970s, Bigler said, and he found Baker to be a capable and friendly colleague.

“Bring him on,” Bigler said. “We’re ready.”