Times Endorsements

One hallmark of good leadership is the ability to learn from mistakes--someone else’s or one’s own.

The Times looked for this trait, among other qualifications, in comparing candidates for three seats on the Board of Supervisors in the March 7 election. We found it in a variety of ways.

Today we endorse the three candidates we believe are most likely to lead Ventura County toward sensible growth, greater fiscal stability and more efficient government:

DISTRICT 1

Steve Bennett has helped lead Ventura County’s campaign to find a different way to grow than the path followed by Los Angeles and Orange counties. In those areas, once-vibrant agriculture has now all but vanished and virtually uncontrolled development has not managed to provide enough housing or highways to meet demand.

As co-founder of the Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources anti-sprawl movement, Bennett argues that it is not necessary to wait until all the greenbelts have been paved before we start to insist on more creative, more sustainable solutions.

Bennett, 49, lives in Ventura and is an assistant principal and economics teacher at Nordhoff High School in Ojai. He has a strong populist streak and environmental credentials. As a one-term Ventura city councilman he pushed campaign finance reform and in this race has accepted no contribution larger than $500--raising more than $66,000 nonetheless.

We like Bennett’s big-picture thinking, his support for important issues such as better transit, government accountability, civic empowerment and farmland preservation, and his zeal for building bridges between disparate factions. We caution him not to go overboard in courting the county employees union--a key power base for retiring Supervisor Susan Lacey and among those who have endorsed Bennett.

The other candidates are veteran Ventura City Councilman Jim Monahan and former Councilwoman Rosa Lee Measures. Both have plenty of government know-how and business-world experience but neither has shown the vision and leadership displayed by Bennett.

We believe he is just the sort of new leader for a new century that Ventura County needs if it is to evolve along different lines than the rest of Southern California.

DISTRICT 3

The board’s biggest mistake of the past two years was what became known as the “mental health merger,” a politically motivated shift of the county’s mental health agency from the medical bureaucracy to the social services bureaucracy. This action--taken despite the warnings of the county’s chief administrator and with appallingly little public discussion--touched off a chain reaction of protests, fraud claims, audits, investigations and fines that has left county government in turmoil and facing millions in penalties.

These financial troubles, along with deeply ingrained bad habits regarding budget practices and respect for the county’s chain of command, looked so ominous to David L. Baker, the chief administrator the board hired in November, that within a week he threw up his hands and resigned.

Of the three supervisors who supported the merger, ringleader Lacey is retiring and the others--Kathy Long and John Flynn--both face opposition March 7.

Long, 50, is challenged by 20-year Camarillo City Council veteran Michael D. Morgan, 52, and political newcomer James Shinn, 73.

In her first term on the board, Long has worked hard on numerous important issues. Although she opposed SOAR, she led the Agriculture Policy Working Group in drawing up alternative strategies. She has strongly opposed the Newhall Ranch development and Santa Paula’s ill-advised proposal to expand into Adams Canyon. She supports Baker’s suggestion that the county give more authority to its top manager and look into making some of its department heads, particularly the auditor-controller, appointed positions rather than elective ones.

Nonetheless, we cannot support her for another term. Long continues to blame others and downplay her own culpability for the merger debacle. She blames the whistle-blower who brought to light the county’s illegal Medicare billing rather than the bureaucrats who set up the system to begin with.

Instead we endorse Michael D. Morgan. He has experience in precisely what the county needs right now: He was on the Camarillo council in the late 1980s when the city found itself on the verge of bankruptcy. He helped to bring in a top-flight city manager who not only paid off all the city’s debts but, over time, helped make Camarillo perhaps the county’s most fiscally secure city.

At a time when the Board of Supervisors needs to learn to stick to policymaking and let a strong executive handle the details, Morgan’s experience is apt. He would also be a third fiscal conservative on the board--a comforting thought in a county coping with economic crisis.

We support Morgan’s view that the county’s chief administrative officer needs more authority and agree with him that “Kingdoms can’t be built behind the scenes. If you do that, you become political entities and they fight with each other.”

Behind-the-scenes political strife serves no one well, a costly lesson that Kathy Long seems not to have fully learned. For that reason we endorse Michael Morgan.

DISTRICT 5

In contrast to Long, incumbent John Flynn soon recognized the folly of the mental health merger, reversed his vote and has worked hard to undo the damage and straighten out the political / organizational problems that begat it.

A 24-year veteran of the board, Flynn, 67, is challenged by Latino activist and Oxnard school board president Francisco Dominguez, 38, and Port Hueneme Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Arlene Fraser.

Although we have differed with Flynn on occasion, he has a mastery of local issues and many contacts at state and federal levels. He has done many things right during his long career in this office. He has made himself an expert in the complicated issue of water supply, worked hard to keep Ventura County’s two Navy bases open and played a key role in the county’s welfare-to-work efforts.

To better represent this heavily Latino district he has learned to speak Spanish and developed strong ties in the Latino community.

We urge Supervisor Flynn to work with the rest of the board to correct some of the bad habits pointed out by David Baker, specifically taking decisive action to end the fiefdoms, the political end runs and the budget padding that have contributed to the county’s present state of disarray. Strengthening the CAO position and having the auditor do more auditing are two crucial steps.

We commend him for moderating his compulsive “loose cannon” side in the two months since the Baker crisis. We urge him to continue to think before he acts and work with the rest of the team.

We appreciate Dominguez’s enthusiasm for new leadership and his school board track record of leaving managing to the managers. We also have great respect for the good works of El Concilio del Condado de Ventura, the social service and advocacy agency he directs. We encourage him to try again for a seat on the Board of Supervisors or Oxnard City Council.

But this time, we endorse John Flynn.