County’s Crisis Gives Way to Compromise

In the year since chief executive David Baker’s sudden decision to flee Ventura County government, the Board of Supervisors has acted as he doubted it ever would--with uncommon unanimity to address the “overwhelming problems” Baker laid out in his scathing letter of resignation.

Just last week, almost exactly 12 months after a frustrated Baker resigned, supervisors moved, as Baker recommended, to change the unwieldy nature of the county’s governmental structure.

The board--divided for years before Baker came and went after only four days on the job--unanimously agreed Tuesday to strengthen the role of the county’s top administrator and weaken its elected auditor.

At the same time, as embattled Auditor-Controller Tom Mahon resigned at midterm Monday, supervisors began to seriously consider putting his job on the ballot in 2002 to ask voters if they want the elected post to be appointive. That is another reform Baker recommended.

And, despite an instinctive reluctance to take on the county’s powerful sheriff and district attorney, the supervisors said last week that they would attempt to solve a key budget problem by looking again at how the county implements Proposition 172, because the current ordinance enriches public safety at the expense of other community programs. Baker called it “a financial imbalance which is dramatic and ongoing.”

“David Baker shook the foundations of this county, and that was a good thing,” Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury said. “He got the public’s attention. And sometimes if the public is not paying attention, government tends not to work as well as it should.”

Baker’s greatest contribution to Ventura County, however, may have been his decision to leave, since his departure brought an accomplished hired gun to town.

Within a month of Baker’s exit, a humiliated but united Board of Supervisors hired Harry Hufford, the former top manager in the nation’s largest county, Los Angeles--a cheerful, wily and tough veteran of 30 years in county government.

“I’ve herded horses and I’ve herded cattle, and believe me, the toughest critters to herd are cats. And Harry has been able to do that,” said Bradbury, an Ojai cowboy himself. “The cats I’m talking about are the Board of Supervisors.”

Hufford Credited for Turnaround

Board members all agree on one thing--that Hufford led Ventura County through a financial and leadership crisis, not Baker. Most of them don’t think much of Baker. But they all believe in cool-hand Harry.

Supervisor John Flynn, the most independent board member, gave a 15-minute speech Tuesday protesting reforms that gave the chief administrator power to hire and fire department heads, transferred many budgetary duties from the auditor to the administrator and gave him permission to hire a chief financial officer.

Flynn said the ordinance funneled too much power into one person’s hands. But in the end, he made the vote unanimous. “I did it for unity on the board,” Flynn said, “and because I have great respect for Harry. He wrote it.”

As one top county official cracked last week, it’s not like Hufford is swimming in the turbulent waters of county government, but walking on them.

Hufford, initially hired for seven months and now contracted for 16, has a slightly different slant on what is coming down at the Ventura County Hall of Administration.

He said Baker deserves some credit for recognizing problems and stating them clearly, but that he should not have cut and run.

“His blueprint was OK,” Hufford said. “But you should put your shoulder to the wheel and address the problems yourself.”

Hufford also notes the “pretty severe price” the county has paid for the negative publicity, including a close watch by queasy bond-rating firms. Supervisors Flynn and Kathy Long, originally facing nominal opposition, were forced into tough reelection campaigns after the Baker scandal broke. Supervisor Judy Mikels was also hurt in her failed run for state Senate, since county problems were fodder for her opponent.

Lost in the rhetoric sometimes, Hufford said, is the way supervisors have worked together on important issues Baker did not address, such as their opposition to Community Memorial Hospital’s attempt to wrest $260 million in tobacco settlement money from the county.

“This is a work in progress,” he said, “but the board has been terrific.”

As for Baker, Hufford said the former administrator sent him a note last June after supervisors balanced the Ventura County budget and conceptually agreed to county government reform.

“He was complimenting me, and in effect saying this wasn’t a job he was willing to do and attaboy Harry,” Hufford said. “But my guess is he could have carried it out.”

Baker, comfortably rehired as the top manager in San Joaquin County, said last week that he admires the reforms achieved in Ventura County since his departure. But he doesn’t second-guess himself for leaving.

“I believe I did what was ethical and the right thing to do under the circumstances,” he said. “Nobody wanted to hurt or embarrass Ventura County. My letter to the board was confidential.”

Baker, a smart and personable perfectionist with a knack for meticulous detail, said he resigned after interviews with key county officials convinced him he had stepped into a governmental quagmire.

“I put in just shy of 300 hours of research before I ever showed up, but I did not foresee the number of issues and the environment I felt once I was there,” Baker said. “Coming in the door I knew the questions and the people I needed to talk to. I did that with dispatch. And I put a thousand percent of my professional ability into it.”

Then after a long walk on a Ventura beach with his wife on Thanksgiving Day, he made a gut-wrenching decision to leave a situation that he thought would frustrate him professionally and hurt his family as well.

“I put my reputation, I put my livelihood, I put my career on the line,” he said. “This was not a pleasurable experience for me. Nobody knows what I went through because there are so many things I will never talk about.”

Not that Baker felt he would never get another good job. He said he received offers from two other California counties--and a statewide organization--almost immediately after resigning in Ventura.

About a week after he returned to Stockton, his old bosses came to see him and quickly made their prodigal son an offer of what amounted to a $5,000 raise. Since then he says he has had “a great year of accomplishment” by starting several county construction programs in a reinvigorated Stockton economy.

That doesn’t mean the Ventura episode did not raise huge questions about Baker’s professionalism. So for the first six months after he resigned, he clipped about 100 newspaper articles about Ventura County government and kept them in a three-ring binder.

When the editorial board of the Stockton newspaper asked him about his move, he presented the binder. “I said, ‘Read this. Six out of seven articles substantiate some aspect of what I reported.’ ”

Baker said he decided to leave Ventura not only because of the structural problems, but because he found a lack of political will by supervisors to change.

“You have board members there who care very much--they’re not bad people,” he said. “They care so much they want to get it right, and sometimes they think their way may be the only way. That’s where the conflict comes in.”

In the year since Baker walked out, the Ventura County board has been remarkably free of conflict, at least in public on important votes.

Understanding that its 3-to-2 split in hiring former chief administrator Lin Koester in 1995 was a mistake, the board chose Hufford unanimously as an interim replacement 11 months ago.

Then supervisors worked in lock-step to erase a $5-million budget deficit. They even stood firmly behind Hufford when he stood up to Sheriff Bob Brooks and asked him to share the county’s budget pain.

Brooks compromised, and neither side was forced to blink.

Rejoining that issue, Hufford proposed recently that supervisors amend the county ordinance implementing Proposition 172. Brooks responded last week with a compromise plan to share the Proposition 172 money. Supervisors welcomed the overture.

Next Challenge Is Finding New CAO

Last week’s decisions showed the board’s continued resolve to erase nagging problems by working together and by consolidating power in the hands of their chief administrator.

“Sometimes a crisis is an impetus to get you back on track, and that was the case this time,” Supervisor Frank Schillo said. “But now I think we have a solidarity among board members.”

But the question remains of how the board will get along in the long run. Supervisors are on their best public behavior because they hope to recruit a high-caliber replacement when Hufford leaves in April.

“The key to success is the relationship between the administrator and the supervisors,” Hufford said. “I am not a controller. I’m a flexible offense and a flexible defense. I don’t have to win an argument, but I don’t want to lose it. And when I need to take a stand, I do.”

Others agree that the board’s greatest challenge in the months ahead is to replace the man who replaced Baker and made his suggestions work.

“The ultimate question,” Bradbury said, “is whether Harry can find someone who has all his strengths to replace him.”