Top-Tier Accountability

Since 1994, we have been critical of the El Toro base reuse planning process. For much of that time, the principal architect of the county’s dubious two-airport system that emerged from it--with a big international airport as the centerpiece--has been Jan Mittermeier.

The recent passage of a ballot initiative requiring that new airport plans be approved by two-thirds of voters has changed everything in the political mix of the county, and it is no surprise that it cast a spotlight on Mittermeier. Last week, Mittermeier outlasted her political obituaries to survive a narrow 3-2 vote of confidence by the Board of Supervisors. An assessment of her five-year stewardship suggests a mixed record of success.

Orange County supervisors have a habit of testing their top executives to the limits of their endurance. Mittermeier’s post-bankruptcy organizational efforts probably would have inoculated her against her recent brush with termination had Measure F been defeated and plans for the airport at El Toro remained on track. Since the airport is intrinsically a political issue, she was held responsible.

Normally, the position of top nonelected county official ought to be judged on more than one issue, but as a practical matter, El Toro is joined to Mittermeier. Her past aviation administration experience and the revelation that she recently inquired about a new airport job in Los Angeles merely certify that airports are her area of specialty as a governmental manager.

With the El Toro project in her portfolio, she had her fingerprints all over the county’s bad gamble that the public could be persuaded that the two-airport plan could fly as proposed. The public has never bought into the “it will all work out” story line that Mittermeier and others advanced. Increasingly informed about aviation issues themselves, citizens didn’t wait for board approval of the final environmental impact statement to look ahead. They saw a day of reckoning when the Federal Aviation Administration would review the proposal with safety questions, and that even if approved, pilots would exercise their own takeoff prerogatives.

There is no question where Mittermeier’s directive to make it all work out originated. The supervisors are the Local Redevelopment Authority for the base. The pressure to implement an unworkable and perhaps unsafe policy came from Mittermeier’s bosses among the pro-international-airport supervisorial majority of three. But she didn’t raise any substantial objections publicly to a plan that was openly criticized by aviation experts either. Neither the board majority nor Mittermeier leveled with the public about a dubious plan for takeoffs and landings, and that created another crisis of confidence in Orange County government after the bankruptcy declaration in late 1994.

The county executive officer is well-positioned in general to take the heat, deservedly or otherwise. After the bankruptcy, the supervisors blamed the county administrative officer--a different title for a job with less power than Mittermeier’s--and fired him. There was much talk about reorganizing government.

The major reorganization that emerged was the merger of several agencies into super-agencies as a cost-saving measure. The Harbors, Beaches and Parks Department, for instance, became part of the Public Facilities Department, lumped in with flood control and general maintenance. That part of Mittermeier’s legacy hasn’t worked out well for county parks. They need all the help they can get to provide escapes for residents facing increasing development and urbanization.

Mittermeier has been criticized, sometimes deservedly, for not keeping supervisors fully briefed on important matters, waiting too long to tell them about planned reorganizations, for instance, or giving them little time to consider proposed budgets. But that’s easy to solve. The supervisors are the ones who are elected and answerable to the residents. It’s up to them to say they need more time or to ask more questions. They cannot just set policy and walk away. The title is supervisor, not policy-setter.

There is a danger on the other side as well. Past supervisors have been notorious for micro-managing and letting department heads do end-runs around a county administrative officer. That damages morale and efficiency.

The concept of a county executive officer is good. But no matter the title, it’s the quality of the person that determines how the job gets done. William J. Popejoy, an independently wealthy, iconoclastic man from the corporate world, was a breath of fresh air as CAO. Supervisors decided not to keep him and chose Mittermeier, a veteran county bureaucrat, as his replacement. To her credit, she got the county thinking in an organized way about long-range planning and priorities. The much-improved financial standing of the county reflects hard work and sound management.

The CEO, whether it’s Mittermeier or somebody else, needs to keep supervisors briefed and also be willing to loosen the reins on information. The CEO works for elected officials, who work for the residents of Orange County. Stonewalling information--trying to ensure that all queries to officials from the public and the press go first through the CEO’s office--is inefficient and wrong.

It has only been five years since the bankruptcy, which has left the county with a mountain of debt despite good economic times in the world outside government. Residents now know that they still can’t leave it to the supervisors alone. They too need to keep an eye on the Hall of Administration to guard against complacency and more failures of governance.