Koester Quietly Exits the County Stage

County employees threw him a small goodbye party and three supervisors offered words of thanks and a standard-issue Ventura County baseball cap.

For the most part, however, county Chief Administrator Lin Koester is departing for his Oregon fishing cabin in the same quiet, understated way he has overseen the county’s $955-million budget and 7,000-person work force over the past four years.

So quietly that the 58-year-old bureaucrat who steered the county through some of the stormiest times in its 126-year history refused requests to even talk about his tenure, saying he wants to focus on the future. But friends said his low-key departure disguises the fact that while he may be looking forward to retirement, he is disturbed that he was unable to move the county past the political infighting surrounding the deeply troubled mental health agency.

“He’s got a lot of mixed feelings. There’s a lot of things he didn’t see through,” said Simi Valley City Manager Mike Sedell, a longtime friend. “But he realizes now is the good time and the right time to leave.”

Koester will spend his last day today taking a few meetings and cleaning out his office.

Friday, Koester will board a plane for Oregon, where he will finish building his cabin, practice his fly-fishing technique and, acquaintances say, attempt to put the most acrimonious year of his three decades in public service behind him.

“It’s a shame that all of his energy these past few months has gone to balancing a negative situation,” said Supervisor Judy Mikels, a close ally of Koester. “But I truly believe it’s to Lin’s credit that it hasn’t gotten worse.”

The county’s Behavioral Health Department has been the focus of a firestorm of criticism and of numerous state and federal investigations since the Board of Supervisors decided against Koester’s advice to combine its mental health and social service agencies.

Facing the loss of millions of dollars in Medicare funds, the board later scrapped the merger. Since then, warring camps in county government have blamed each other for the mess and disagreed over how to fix the problems.

So far, the county has lost $15.3 million. By the time the damage is finally cleaned up, the bill could reach $20 million or more, the worst blow to the county’s budget in history.

Through it all, Koester was at the center of the storm. He had the difficult job of responding to regulators and, at the same time, attempting to smooth the ruffled feathers of department heads and two supervisors, Susan Lacey and Kathy Long, who refused to believe the merger was a mistake.

Some said Koester’s regime was crippled from the start, since he was hired on a split 3-2 vote in 1995. Lacey and then-Supervisor Maggie Kildee voted against his appointment, saying he did not have enough county experience. “Any time you serve five bosses who don’t always agree, it’s difficult,” Sedell said. “But he knew that going in. He saw that as a fact of professional life.”

Koester began his career in government service with the county, serving in the 1970s in the environmental resources department. He later served as Simi Valley’s city manager for 16 years. He replaced former county executive Richard Wittenberg, a charismatic leader whose farewell bash drew more than 1,000 people to the fairgrounds in 1995. But Mikels and Supervisor Frank Schillo lauded the lower-key Koester for bringing discipline to what they say had been a lax county administration.

Department heads who seemed never to be in their offices under Wittenberg were called on the carpet and ordered to improve their performance, Schillo said.

Koester also balanced the budget and instituted procedures to ensure it was completed on time. As well as as a disciplinarian, he wanted to be a conciliator, trying to improve the relationship between the cities and the county by attending monthly meetings of city managers and trying to work out differences, Mikels said.

One result was the creation of the countywide library commission and improving library services at the city level, she said.

“Lin understood both sides of the picture,” Mikels said. “He worked at consensus.” Supporters say he will ultimately be remembered as a respected, efficient and bottom-line oriented administrator.

That he was unable to bring the supervisors to agreement on the merger issue is his greatest disappointment, friends say. Bitterness is still high, evidenced by the board’s failure to publicly acknowledge Koester’s departure with the same flowing tributes and frivolity that marked Wittenberg’s exit.

Mikels decided to say a few words and present Koester with a baseball cap at Tuesday’s board meeting, his last, only after it became clear that no other board tribute was planned.

“I did not want him to go away from his last board meeting without some acknowledgment from the board,” she said. “And the baseball cap quite frankly wasn’t from the board. It was from me.”

Mikels, Schillo and Supervisor John Flynn offered Koester praise and thanks for his service during a short presentation. Long and Lacey remained silent.