Board Asks Hufford to Redefine Job

Supervisors agreed Tuesday they want to give their top administrator more power to keep them out of future financial misadventures, but they have yet to agree on just what those powers should be.

So they asked him to write his own job description.

Harry Hufford, a proven administrator who previously guided Los Angeles County out of financial trouble, was hired in January to succeed Chief Administrative Officer David L. Baker. Baker quit after only four days on the job, saying the county’s budget was a mess and that the CAO did not have the power to solve the problems.

Since arriving as an interim replacement, the 68-year-old Hufford has pushed for more authority, and on Tuesday board members for the first time expressed public support for the idea. Several residents attending the meeting offered ideas of their own.

Ed Jones, a former county supervisor, suggested changing Hufford’s title to chief executive officer. Mike Saliba, president of the Ventura County Taxpayers Assn., said Hufford should be able to hire his own chief financial officer, who would oversee agency budgets more tightly than has been the case in recent years. Another proposal would transfer some of the county’s budget analysts from the county auditor’s office to Hufford’s office.

The idea is to prevent lower ranking administrators from making end-runs around the chief executive and cutting special deals with the supervisors, a practice that has thrown the county’s budget into disarray in recent years, administrators say. It would also allow Hufford to better guide the county’s strategy as it tries to fend off an attempt by private hospitals to take the county’s $260-million tobacco settlement.

Supervisors have yet to agree on a specific set of new powers, and in recent weeks their attempts to float suggestions resulted in embarrassing mud slinging and an accusation of political plagiarism. On Tuesday, they mostly kept their personal differences at bay and told Hufford to put together his own proposal on which they could vote.

Hufford said he hoped to return within two weeks with a plan.

Meanwhile, Supervisor Susan Lacey told colleagues that if they are really serious about solving the county’s budget problems, which resulted in a $5-million shortfall this year, they should amend the local ordinance governing Proposition 172. That measure gives the lion’s share of a half-cent public safety sales tax to the district attorney, the Sheriff’s Department and the probation and public defender’s offices. It also allows law enforcement budgets to grow each year, even if other departments are scaled back.

Lacey said if the public safety ordinance isn’t reined in, expanding the administrator’s powers would be meaningless. “I don’t know how the chief administrative officer has power over the budget as long as [Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury and Sheriff Bob Brooks] just keep getting more of the general fund budget, without demonstrated need,” Lacey said.

Hufford would not say whether he agreed with Lacey. “I’m not going to talk about that specifically,” he said.

Supervisor Frank Schillo said Hufford may indeed have less authority over Bradbury and Brooks as a result of the Proposition 172 ordinance, but he wants to keep it intact anyhow.

“That’s the way it goes,” he said. “The board already made a decision on Proposition 172, four years ago.”

Supervisor John Flynn, the swing vote when the ordinance was passed 3-2 in 1995, said he would consider rolling back the part of the measure guaranteeing inflationary increases. He said Hufford should do an analysis to see how much that inflationary guarantee has brought law enforcement agencies, compared with other county agencies.

But any other modifications to the plan would be “politically difficult,” Flynn said, acknowledging that in Ventura County, law enforcement money has assumed sacred cow status.

Supervisor Kathy Long said that the inflationary provision is worth examining, but that she would be satisfied with the ordinance as it stands, so long as it allows funds to be spent on a $65-million juvenile justice complex the county is gearing up to build.

Lacey, who is retiring at the end of the year when her term expires, voted against the ordinance in 1995. She would like to spread the money around to social services agencies that play a less direct role in public safety.

Brooks said that Lacey was “a minority of one” on the board and that, based on his conversations with Hufford over the last few months, he doesn’t think the administrator wants to curb the ordinance.

Brooks said reducing law enforcement agencies’ budgets would have “nothing to do with taking power away from myself or the district attorney, and everything to do with taking power away from the voters” who approved Proposition 172 with a commitment from supervisors about how the money would be spent.

Mike Morgan, a Camarillo councilman challenging Long in this fall’s election, agreed with Brooks. “If you want to change it, you’re going to have to take it to the public,” he said. Two other supervisorial candidates could not be reached for comment.

According to a Times analysis last year, county law enforcement budgets have grown 70% since 1993, when voters passed Proposition 172. In contrast, the overall budget has grown by 29%.

Most of the 70% increase--about 80%--comes directly from the special sales tax. The remaining 20% comes from the county’s general fund, as a result of the guaranteed inflationary increases.

At the same time, that analysis found that the agencies receiving Proposition 172 funds are taking a smaller share of the general fund now than they did in 1993.