New CEO Called Easy Choice
Michael Schumacher, tapped Tuesday by Orange County supervisors to step in for departing County Executive Officer Jan Mittermeier, is a veteran employee described as someone likely to soothe nerves jangled by the hard-edged style of his predecessor.
Schumacher, 59, was the longtime head of the county’s Probation Department until last November, when he took over its troubled Health Care Agency. He is respected for both his administrative ability and his consensus-building style. And after 30 years in county government, he is steeped in its processes, as well as in its private maneuverings.
Several officials called him the logical choice of a five-member board that is hopelessly split and under fire for backing an international airport at El Toro. Others predicted he would be a calming force after the contentious reign of Mittermeier, who butted heads with supervisors and tolerated no dissent from her subordinates.
“If the board is regaining control over policy, he will steadfastly execute that policy in a way that makes everyone comfortable,” said Sam Roth, a vice president with the California Medical Assn. who has worked with county officials for 15 years. “He has a lot of hands-on practical experience at the machinations of county government. He smooths out edges. He isn’t going to alienate or rock the boat.”
Before moving to the beleaguered health agency, which had seen five directors in two years, Schumacher served 20 years as the county’s chief probation officer, becoming a nationally recognized expert in the field. Those who have worked with him say he is cool under duress and a “corporate firefighter,” able to solve problems and develop support for his programs or those of superiors.
“I was very impressed with his ability to pursue an issue and be successful,” said former Supervisor Marian Bergeson, who as a state senator worked with Schumacher developing legislation to improve the juvenile justice system. “He was someone who could start something and finish it.”
Supervisors have had their eyes on Schumacher for the top county job at least three times before. He was a candidate when Larry Parrish left in the 1989, but the job went to Ernie Schneider.
Former Supervisor Bruce Nestande, who left the board in 1987, lauded Schumacher, noting that as head of probation he had considerable contact with board members in the pre-Mittermeier era, before department heads were subordinated to the executive officer.
“I always felt he used good judgment,” Nestande said. “He was an able administrator and I give him high marks.”
In September 1998, when supervisors wrangled with Mittermeier over her contract renewal and trimmed back her authority, they approached Schumacher, asking him to “wait in the wings” in case talks deteriorated, several sources told The Times.
He was on deck again in April, when the supervisors had another showdown with Mittermeier. But supervisors fell one vote shy of the three needed to dismiss her.
Many said Schumacher is more than a consummate bureaucrat and survivor.
“He is clever enough to make points in a fashion that, no matter how strongly a supervisor disagreed on an issue, the arguments would be understandable and palatable to them,” said Dan Wooldridge, a former supervisor’s aide and senior vice president of Waters & Faubel, a Newport Beach public affairs firm.
It was as head of probation that Schumacher developed “the 8% solution,” a program that targets repeat offenders with services aimed at altering their behavior. It is this group, Schumacher argues in a book published under the title “The 8% Solution,” that takes part in more than 50% of juvenile crime.
The program, first tried in Orange County in 1985, cut recidivism among these at-risk youth in half, though it has never gotten full funding. The state adopted a more modest version of it in 1997 and it is being adopted elsewhere.
“It has been a model across the country,” said Helen Dell-Imagine, who heads the Orange County Juvenile Justice Commission. “[Schumacher] is a hard worker and creative. He brings people together.”
At the Health Care Agency, where his salary is $145,000 a year, he helped quell widespread anger among animal activists and local veterinarians, who were upset with a disease outbreak and inadequate adoption programs at the county animal shelter. Schumacher ordered both the head veterinarian and administrator replaced within two months of taking over at HCA, which oversees the animal shelter.
More recently, however, he has drawn criticism from health care advocates, who say he has bowed to Mittermeier and three county supervisors--Cynthia P. Coad, Jim Silva and Chairman Chuck Smith--who want to use most of the county’s estimated $765 million in tobacco settlement funds on debt and jails, instead of health needs. As health care director, Schumacher should have been a voice for health needs in the community, critics said.
“There wasn’t enough time for Mike to develop as a forceful health care advocate,” Roth said. “And we certainly need that to happen in the future from an agency director.”
As part of Tuesday’s shake-up in county government, Julie Poulson, 53, was named interim director of the Health Care Agency. A registered nurse and assistant director at the agency, she had served as interim director in 1999 before Schumacher took health care’s top job.
Schumacher, who was married two years ago, is reserved about his family life, but is quick to tell visitors to his well-appointed office that most of the plush furnishings--an off-white leather sofa and chair set along with a credenza--belong to his wife, Cindy. When the two merged their homes, the excess furnishings went into storage, then moved with Schumacher into his sixth-floor office at the Health Care Agency.
He is also known for his stylish taste in cars. For years, he drove a blue 1976 Cadillac Seville, and kept it when he bought a new Cadillac in 1985.
Schumacher, a registered Democrat who lives in Huntington Beach, has two master’s degrees, one in psychology and the other in public administration. He also has a doctorate in human behavior from the U.S. International University in San Diego.
Former Supervisor Bill Steiner, who has known Schumacher for two decades, said his “greatest strength is that he is a team player. He took a lot of leadership during the bankruptcy and was innovative in preserving programs, saving the 8% solution from cuts.”
