Schillo Takes Role as Chief Inquisitor

Long before the severity of Ventura County’s financial problems became clear last month, Supervisor Frank Schillo was trying to drag them into public light.

At board meetings and budget sessions, the second-term supervisor warned his colleagues they should curb spending or face the prospect of plunging the county deep into debt.

He complained that individual department managers--and the Board of Supervisors as a whole--didn’t understand their predicament, much less the need for long-term belt-tightening to avoid future problems.

Then former chief administrator David L. Baker rolled into town and declared the county a financial mess before running for cover back to Stockton after only four days on the job.

It wasn’t the first time that Schillo, a 66-year-old financial planner with a reputation for brutal honesty, had tried to head off what he considered reckless behavior.

In 1998, he loudly protested plans to merge the county’s health and welfare agencies. The board’s decision to go ahead with it indirectly uncovered a Medicare billing fiasco that resulted in millions of dollars in fines and penalties, and is largely to blame for a looming $5-million budget deficit.

Schillo has emerged from those scandals with his reputation and power enhanced.

If Ventura County’s bad times have been good for anyone, it is Frank Schillo. A blend of conservative ideologue and compassionate humanitarian, he has in five years on the board made the long journey from tight-fisted outsider to mainstream power broker.

He has taken a leading role as supervisors this month try to balance a $1-billion budget and hammer out reforms intended to put the county back on solid financial footing.

Schillo knows this is a rare political moment, and he says he doesn’t intend to let it slip away.

“We have a unique opportunity right now,” said Schillo, a die-hard fiscal conservative whose 2nd District encompasses Thousand Oaks, Oak Park and Port Hueneme.

“The most important thing we need to do is to get us back in control,” he said. “Even though we’ve gone through this whole mess, we have the opportunity to come out in a much better situation.”

Schillo has been promoting this brand of lean and mean government since he was elected to the board in 1994.

After a decade on the Thousand Oaks City Council, he came to county government advocating the need to have the Board of Supervisors, not department heads, set the county’s goals and agenda.

Facing a $42-million deficit, he successfully lobbied for a hiring freeze, advocated the elimination of little-used programs and fought to reduce the size of the county’s work force by eliminating vacant positions.

Many of those same issues were highlighted in Baker’s resignation letter, a six-page bombshell that shined a harsh light on the way Ventura County government does business and provided a blueprint for change.

With Schillo taking a lead role, supervisors this month began sorting out the mess.

Board to Tackle Budget Issues

They threw their support behind interim chief administrator Harry Hufford, who earlier this month ordered a hiring freeze as a first step toward eliminating the projected budget shortfall.

And the board plans to spend a good portion of the next six months revamping the budget process to make sure this kind of thing never happens again.

So far, no one has emerged more vocal or insistent upon change than Schillo.

He has taken on the role as chief inquisitor, hammering department heads with hard questions and making them justify every penny that is spent.

A week after Baker’s departure, Schillo and Supervisor Judy Mikels grilled Auditor Tom Mahon on changes they said were necessary to bring stability to county government.

That hard-line approach has played well to those keeping a close watch on the county’s spending practices.

“He’s one of the county leaders with the fiscal discipline that is needed at this time to lead the county out of its problems,” said Mike Saliba, executive director of the Taxpayers Assn. of Ventura County. “He sets a standard for others to follow.”

Observers say Schillo can be gruff. And his gloom-and-doom cautionary warnings are sometimes hard to hear. But they say he is on target more often than not, a track record that makes him one of the county’s most credible elected officials.

“If you’re going to take something to Frank, you better have your act together,” said Ventura County Sheriff Bob Brooks, an ally who has benefited from Schillo’s support of law enforcement.

“He certainly is an astute questioner of anything that doesn’t make sense to him,” Brooks said. “He understands fiscal stewardship and takes it very seriously.”

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Added Supervisor John Flynn, who is sometimes on the other side politically: “He does his homework and is always prepared. And when he decides to do something, he does it without any hesitation. I like that about him.”

Not everyone is as impressed. Critics contend Schillo is quick to put the budget squeeze on county employees while slow to apply the same restraint to himself.

He was among the supervisors who voted in June to give themselves a 7.7% raise, just as the county was beginning to grapple with its current financial crunch.

And he took a good deal of flak in 1995 when he moved his office to the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, leasing a space that cost taxpayers $10,000 a year more than his predecessor’s office.

“It’s caused some of us to wonder whether his fiscal conservatism and concern for taxpayer dollars begins and ends at the tip of his nose,” said Barry Hammitt, head of the Service Employees International Union, which represents county workers.

“I don’t know that he’s a bad supervisor,” Hammitt said. “But I don’t know if he’s necessarily accomplished anything at this point in time that will cause people to look back and say he’s left his mark on the county.”

Schillo said his critics are wrong on both counts.

While he knows he ruffled feathers by moving to the Civic Arts Plaza, he said he saved 21% on his office space last year by renegotiating the rent.

He cited a midyear budget analysis released recently that showed his office is projected to be nearly $16,000 under budget by the end of this fiscal year.

Moreover, Schillo said he has accomplished much during his five-year tenure that has improved the way county government does business.

Schillo led the effort to overhaul the county’s cash-strapped library system, crafting a plan to cut overhead costs and use the savings to expand hours and give member cities more control over their own branch libraries.

Schillo Says Bottom Line Not Only Interest

He helped establish a countywide economic development corporation dedicated to luring new businesses and attracting federal dollars to spur job creation.

And he set out to establish a yardstick for measuring fiscal responsibility, urging board colleagues to hold regular meetings with the chief administrative officer and pushing for a first-ever session to develop a mission statement and a set of budget priorities.

“I’m a business owner, and a business owner looking at the way government operates would just walk away from it--it just doesn’t make economic sense,” Schillo said. “I wanted to change the whole direction of how we operated.”

Schillo insists, however, that he’s not only interested in the bottom line. A devout Catholic, he has donated money and time to a number of social service organizations.

In fact, he owes his political career to charity work.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Dayton, Schillo moved to Thousand Oaks in 1971 to work as a financial planner.

He also served on the board of directors at Manna food bank in Thousand Oaks from 1974 to 1979. In 1979, he founded Many Mansions, a Thousand Oaks-based provider of affordable housing.

After a proposal to build a low-cost apartment building was turned down, he decided to run for a council seat, a race he won by 3,000 votes.

His social conscience still runs strong today, he said.

Schillo launched a gang tattoo-removal clinic in 1994 to help former gang members start a new life. More than 1,000 people have taken advantage of the clinics, first offered in Port Hueneme and recently made available in Santa Paula and Thousand Oaks.

He also led the charge last year to establish a range of after-school programs in the Hueneme Elementary School District. He came up with the money to hire a grant writer who obtained $2.25 million in federal money for the 8,000-student district.

“Absent Frank’s leadership, there would be 1,400 kids without any guidance after school,” Hueneme Supt. Robert Fraisse said. “He’s a can-do kind of person. He doesn’t spend a lot of time on formalities. He comes in and says, ‘What do we need to do and how can we get it done?’ ”

Critics Question Leadership Role

There is plenty left to do in county government. And there are some things Schillo set out to do but hasn’t been able to accomplish.

He had hoped by now that the county would have adopted a two-year budget, a strategy he has advocated since he was first elected to better alert county leaders to upcoming problems.

And despite persuading his colleagues to participate in a goal-setting session when he first took office, he is disappointed that such strategy meetings don’t occur annually.

Some critics question whether these failures point up a flaw in Schillo’s leadership.

Former county Supervisor Madge Schaefer, who has butted heads with Schillo in the past, said it’s not enough for him to now stand up and say he had warned all along that the county was headed down a perilous financial path.

A true leader, Schaefer said, would have been able to persuade his colleagues to steer clear.

“Leadership means you get people to follow you,” said Schaefer, who in 1997 gave up the unsettled air of Ventura County’s politics for the gentle trade winds of Maui.

“If he hasn’t been able to move the board in five years, maybe it’s time to step aside and bring in somebody who can,” Schaefer said.

Schillo said there is no chance that will happen. He said he has too much work to do.

Schillo said the most immediate need is to balance the budget for this fiscal year and impose reforms to ensure the county never again spirals into the red.

He said the board will also be busy searching for a permanent chief administrator, someone who clearly understands the board’s objectives and who will vow to carry them out.

In the long term, Schillo said he wants to further explore his proposal to spend about half of the county’s share of tobacco settlement dollars on expanded housing and treatment for the mentally ill.

And he said he will be there every step of the way to make sure money is being spent wisely, and to alert the public when it’s not.

“My constituents have said to me, ‘Frank, we’re sending you to Ventura and we want you to make sure they’re spending our dollars correctly,’ ” Schillo said. “We’re stewards of the public’s money, and if we’re screwing up they’ve got a right to be angry.”