Mittermeier, Still at It, Insists on El Toro Role

Don’t expect humble bouquets from Jan Mittermeier just because she escaped a boot out the door this week as Orange County’s top executive officer.

A day after the county Board of Supervisors voted 3 to 2 to retain her, dousing weeks of speculation that she’d be fired, Mittermeier stood her ground on one of the main issues that put her job at risk: the plan to convert the former El Toro Marine base to a commercial airport.

Mittermeier, in an interview Wednesday, said any attempt by the board to deplete her authority over the controversial airport would be “a deal breaker” and lead to her resignation.

The county set up a stringent system of checks and balances, including sweeping authority granted to the county chief executive, in the wake of its 1994 financial collapse. A return to the pre-bankruptcy days when supervisors enjoyed broader powers would send the county tumbling back into the political morass that led to the bankruptcy, she said.

“I can’t live with anything where we take a step back to the past,” Mittermeier said. “That’s the kind of organization that led this county into bankruptcy. We must keep the structure the board agreed to when it hired me.”

The usually tight-lipped Mittermeier said she was “totally stunned” when she learned she had survived Tuesday’s vote, especially by the vote of support she received from one of her fiercest critics on the board, Thomas W. Wilson. But Mittermeier offered no guarantee that she’ll stay on at her $160,000-a-year post to the end of her contract, which expires in October 2001.

“I don’t have a crystal ball,” she said. “But I really do have to reflect very carefully on what this means.”

About the closest thing to contrition showed by Orange County’s top staff executive was to say she hoped for a heart-to-heart talk soon with Supervisor Charles V. Smith, who led the dramatic but failed effort to get her fired.

“I want to get a clear understanding from Chuck why he’s unhappy with me,” Mittermeier said. “And I’ll do whatever I can to fix the problem--if it can be fixed.”

Supervisors have clashed with Mittermeier on a variety of issues since she was hired as county executive officer in July 1995, ranging from El Toro to what some call her “secretive” management style and tightfisted reign over county operations and the hiring and firing of key county personnel.

Her job most recently came into peril after a string of recent setbacks on the El Toro airport plan, which a slim three-member board majority supports. Mittermeier was blasted by some board members for failing to have a contingency plan for Measure F, which voters approved overwhelmingly in March to halt the proposed airport. Criticism grew louder about two weeks ago when word leaked out that Mittermeier had interviewed for a deputy director’s position at Los Angeles International Airport.

When Smith filed an agenda item for Tuesday to have Mittermeier removed, and to appoint an interim CEO, Mittermeier started cleaning out her office. She said she was convinced that when she had lost Smith’s support, she had lost her job.

Tuesday morning, just as the board began a closed-door session to decide her fate, Mittermeier’s closest staff members took her to breakfast at a Polly’s Pies restaurant for what she was certain was her final farewell.

“I expected to be fired,” she said flatly.

The last family picture was already off her office walls, keys were in the desk. Assuming it wasn’t her office anymore, she went home to return phone calls from well-wishers and sympathizers.

Then the call from her staff came about 10 a.m. You’d better get back here, she was told: The supervisors were still toiling over her future.

Back at her desk, she killed time with phone calls and e-mails. For a couple of excruciatingly long hours she waited for her pink slip.

And then she heard applause: 12:09 p.m., one staff member says. Her staff heard the result of the vote on the intercom.

“I didn’t know how the vote had gone until I heard my staff members clapping and cheering,” Mittermeier said.

Mittermeier said she can laugh about it now: “You learn that every day is a new day around here.”

By the time it was over, “We all had heartburn,” said Supervisor Jim Silva, one of her supporters.

Silva, Wilson and Supervisor Cynthia Coad voted to retain her. Smith and Supervisor Todd Spitzer--who are often on opposite sides of controversial issues--voted to fire her.

Mittermeier said the only vote she had been confident about was from Coad, who’d gone public where she stood on the chief executive’s fate. Coad took her to lunch afterward at Trattoria Ciao’s, then Mittermeier fielded calls from some of the other supervisors.

Wilson told her he had voted his conscience.

“I just didn’t see it as simple as ‘Let’s fire Jan and everything will be OK,’ ” Wilson said Wednesday. “Things could get worse. I didn’t think Chuck or Todd had a good enough argument for getting rid of her.”

End of Week Busier Than She’d Planned

Mittermeier walked into the office Wednesday morning happy to be back.

Still, she said she had to cancel some “appointments” she had made for the rest of the week, when she expected to be unemployed. Mittermeier wouldn’t specify the nature of those appointments, such as whether they were job related.

However, she did shed some light on the circumstances surrounding the interview at LAX that stirred up so much controversy earlier this month.

Mittermeier will only say that she did not seek the LAX position, and has gone after no jobs at all during the recent months she’s been under fire.

“I haven’t hired headhunters, I haven’t sought anything,” she said. “But if someone comes to you to talk about something, it would be silly to say, ‘Wait until I’m out of work first.’ ”

Mittermeier has been controversial from Day One; she was granted sweeping powers by the supervisors because they believed a strong hand was necessary to dig the county out of the disastrous quagmire of its $1.64-billion bankruptcy. Besides, it was the only way Mittermeier would take the job.

The Board of Supervisors grudgingly agreed, but for most of those years, she’s found herself with two votes almost always against her, Wilson’s and Spitzer’s. Both are ardent foes of the proposed El Toro airport that the majority has pushed for.

But when the pro-airport Smith, her chief supporter, turned against her in recent weeks, it appeared her 3-2 support had flip-flopped.

Silva, a strong El Toro airport proponent, has proposed that the board meet with Mittermeier to discuss three options aimed at reviving the airport planning process:

* Carve the airport issue away from the CEO and give it to someone who would report directly to the Board of Supervisors.

* Create an agency much like a redevelopment agency to handle the airport, or

* Make personnel changes on leadership on airport issues within the county staff.

Mittermeier has said candidly that the first option is not one if she is to stay.

But before any other option is pursued, she said, the board majority has to decide whether there is enough community support to overcome the well-organized airport opposition. If not, she said, there’s no need for the board to take the steps to get the issue back on another ballot for voters.

Silva agrees.

“Three supervisors cannot sell this airport,” Silva said. “We’ve got to have support from those people in the community who are stakeholders, who need that airport.”

Wilson, on the other hand, says that “With Measure F in my back pocket, I don’t have to worry about Jan on the airport too much. And on other issues, she’s done a good job. Nobody influenced me to stick with her; I did it out of my own sense of good business.”

Mittermeier did thank him for his support, and calls him “an ethical man; I can work with him. I can work with all the supervisors. And as long as we are making progress toward effective, efficient government in this county, I plan to be here.”