Debate Emerges Over 3 Elected County Posts

They issue marriage certificates, run elections, collect taxes and keep tabs on county government’s $1-billion budget.

Such perfunctory but important government duties are performed by Clerk-Recorder Richard Dean, Treasurer-Tax Collector Hal Pittman and Auditor-Controller Tom Mahon, who are elected to their offices by the county’s voters.

But whether voters should continue to select those officials has emerged as one of the hottest issues this primary season. Spurred by recent criticisms of county government as inefficient and dysfunctional, six of nine candidates for the Board of Supervisors suggest at least one of those elective posts, and perhaps all three, should be converted to appointed jobs.

A majority of supervisors favors, at the least, reviewing the issue. Proponents say reducing the number of elective posts would centralize administrative leadership by bringing those department heads directly under the control of the county’s chief administrative officer. It also would increase accountability when something goes wrong, advocates say, because supervisors could fire appointed managers at will.

Support for a more corporate model of government grew in the uproar following former county manager David L. Baker’s finding that local government lurches from one fiscal crisis to another because the chief administrator’s position is too weak to conduct effective planning and fiscal analysis.

Baker found fault, in particular, with Mahon, saying he inappropriately shapes budget policy instead of serving in an accounting role, an accusation the auditor has denied.

Francisco Dominguez, who is challenging Supervisor John K. Flynn for the District 5 seat in the March 7 primary, believes Baker got it right.

“Power is too fragmented when you have so many elected department heads,” Dominguez said. “When something goes wrong, everyone points a finger at everyone else. You can’t have accountability if the system does not allow it.”

Other candidates calling for possible conversion of offices are Steve Bennett of Ventura, an assistant principal at Nordhoff High School in Ojai, competing in the District 1 race, businessmen Mike Morgan and Jim Shinn of Camarillo, who are challenging Supervisor Kathy Long in District 3, and community activist Arlene Fraser in Flynn’s Oxnard-area district.

Board support for a conversion proposal centers around a broader goal of making county government more efficient. If converting some elective offices to appointed managers would increase the chief administrative officer’s ability to control the budget, then it should be considered, Long said.

“I think it’s healthy to look at it,” the Camarillo supervisor said. “I’m not targeting anyone. I’m responding to frustration expressed by folks who have said to me over the last couple of months that the CAO should have more control.”

Supervisor Frank Schillo said he favors retaining the auditor-controller’s office as a separately elected office to preserve the auditor’s independence when reviewing other department budgets. But there is less justification for having an elected clerk or tax collector, he said.

“They do an internal administrative job,” Schillo said. “Collecting taxes and keeping records are government functions that could easily be handled whether that person is elected or not.”

Supervisor Judy Mikels also favors conversion--as long as it’s done after the sitting politician in that office steps down or retires.

“It’s a valid discussion to have in terms of streamlining the operation,” Mikels said. “And if it does, as the current officeholders retire, we should convert those to appointed offices.”

Opponents of conversion say it is folly to believe that government would run more efficiently if department heads are appointed. Reducing the number of elected offices would only consolidate the Board of Supervisors’ power at the voters’ expense, they say.

“The people who talk about this need to go back and take their high school civics class and learn about checks and balances,” said Dean, the county’s clerk and recorder since 1983. “Governments are set up this way because you don’t want to have power concentrated in the hands of a few.”

Pittman said the problem lies not with the number of elected officers but with the power delegated to the county’s top administrator. He said Baker, who quit his Ventura County post after four days, now has the top job in a Northern California county that has the same number of elected department managers as Ventura County.

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The difference, Pittman said, is that the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors has recognized Baker as chief executive officer, a position with more sweeping authority over all aspects of county government.

If Ventura County supervisors had agreed to beef up the budgetary staff in the top administrator’s office, and changed the position to one with executive authority, there would be no need to convert elected offices, Pittman said.

The treasurer suggests raising the issue is an attempt to divert attention from the real source of the county’s recent financial troubles--mandated funding for some departments and a board division on major issues.

“Mr. Dean and myself had nothing to do with the county’s [fiscal] problems,” said Pittman, who took office in 1988 after serving as assistant treasurer and tax collector. “I’ve been nothing but a team player here. It feels like no good deed goes unpunished.”

The county now has six elected department heads in addition to five elected supervisors. By state law, three of those department officers--the district attorney, sheriff and assessor--must be elected.

But local voters have greater discretion over whether to elect the other posts. Converting the offices can be achieved in at least two ways, state officials say. One is to convene a citizens’ commission and begin the lengthy process of adopting a county charter, which gives local residents greater flexibility to tailor the structure of government.

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The alternative is to place the question on a ballot and let voters decide. Conversion often occurs when the current officeholder steps down, said Peter Detwiler, staff consultant to the state Senate’s Local Government Committee.

“It is a window of political opportunity,” Detwiler said.

When county governments were being formed across the state 150 years ago, voters typically elected more than a dozen officers per county, Detwiler said. This reflected America’s long-held fear of concentrated government power, he said.

Some counties have seen little need to change. Amador County still has an elected surveyor, a remnant of its Gold Rush past, Detwiler said. “Where the lines were drawn on gold claims was very important,” he said.

But over time the number of elected offices has contracted and the trend has been to convert them to focus accountability, Detwiler said. Thirteen of the state’s 58 counties have adopted charters to institute even more sweeping changes.

In the wake of Orange County’s 1995 bankruptcy--blamed on high-risk investments by then-Treasurer Robert L. Citron--county officials there began pushing for adoption of a charter. Among other reforms, a charter would have allowed the county to make the treasurer an appointed position.

But the charter idea was defeated at the polls, in large part because the man appointed to replace Citron advocated against making his office appointive, said Dave Kiff, who was a staff aide to Supervisor Marian Bergeson at the time.

Pittman, Dean and Mahon say they are better public guardians because they answer to the Ventura County electorate, not supervisors.

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Dean, who operates the county’s Elections Division, recalls the pressure put on his office to throw out 40,000 signatures collected by Community Memorial Hospital in its 1995 bid to stop a $51-million upgrade of the county’s public hospital. When Dean disagreed with the board’s position that the petitions were filed too late to qualify for a ballot, supervisors sued Dean’s office and Community Memorial.

Dean said he had to hire a lawyer to defend his office. A Santa Barbara judge later ruled the petitions were timely and supervisors were then forced to place the measure on the ballot.

“It was obvious what the board wanted to do,” Dean said. “An appointed registrar of voters would not have risked their job by ignoring that.”

Pittman, who invests money for the county, school districts and special districts, says he was pressured years ago to switch to investments that produce higher returns--but also carry higher risks. He refused.

“It was very subtle, yet unmistakable: ‘Why don’t you get higher returns like Orange County?’ ” Pittman said. “That’s why it’s necessary to be independent.”

Mahon has been the target of much criticism in recent months for failing to alert the public to brewing financial problems until a cash-flow crisis emerged late last year. And in Baker’s analysis of structural problems within county government, he accused the auditor of being too involved in the budget-making process.

Mahon says his office stepped in to fill a vacuum created when former chief administrator Lin Koester cut the number of budget analysts in his office as a cost savings. And in December he felt obligated to make recommendations to the board on how to begin reining in the budget because the county was temporarily without a chief administrator.

Supervisor Flynn agrees the elected department heads should remain elected. Voters like to be able to choose who they want for those positions and to throw them out if necessary, he said.

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The county’s interim chief administrator, Harry Hufford, has been asked to review the county’s organization and make recommendations to the board later this year. Hufford, a former Los Angeles County administrator, said potential conversion of some offices will be part of his analysis.

He will review the functions performed by each elected officer. Hufford said he is particularly interested in the relationship between the auditor and the CAO’s office.

“In some respects the auditor’s fiduciary responsibility is better served as an appointed [role]. Then he is responsible to the board and it is his responsibility to do audits that are hard-hitting,” the administrator said.

In Los Angeles County, Hufford worked with just three elected managers--the district attorney, sheriff and assessor. He said it was an experience he found “generally successful.”