Long, Morgan in Different Camps on Tobacco Funds

As they gear up for the November election, Supervisor Kathy Long and her challenger, Camarillo Councilman Mike Morgan, have staked out different positions over a key countywide initiative that will determine who will control $260 million in tobacco settlement money.

Measure O seeks to turn over the county’s share of the tobacco money to seven private area hospitals for health care programs. The money would be paid out over 25 years.

Long and her colleagues fought unsuccessfully in court to keep the initiative off the ballot, arguing it is unconstitutional and represents an illegal gift of public funds. Expressing “grave doubts” about its legality, the judge in the case nonetheless ruled the measure be placed on the ballot.

If Measure O passes, Long said the county should again sue the sponsor--Community Memorial Hospital--to block its implementation. Long said the money should be spent on county health care programs.

Morgan, however, said, “If people vote it in, I think that’s where it should stay.” If the measure fails, Morgan said, the county should share the settlement money with private hospitals.

Measure O is only one of several issues that separate the two candidates in the highly contentious 3rd District race, a rematch of a 1996 contest in which Long beat Morgan by an 8% margin in what is the largest and most diverse district in the county.

The campaign is expected to heat up in coming weeks, as the two Camarillo-based politicians battle it out in the nonpartisan race by underscoring their strengths, while emphasizing each other’s weaknesses.

Long, 50, hopes to convince voters she is an experienced and capable leader who helped the county emerge from a costly Medicare billing scandal and the abrupt resignation of county manager David Baker in December after only four days on the job.

Morgan, who lags behind Long in campaign funds and major endorsements, is trying to paint the incumbent as an ineffective politician whose conduct, including her vote for a botched merger of two county agencies, helped trigger the county’s fiscal crisis and scare away Baker.

He accuses Long of being too cozy with special interest groups, including labor unions and developers, that have funded her campaign. Morgan also decries Long as an opportunist who takes credit for helping hire Harry Hufford, a veteran of Los Angeles County government, to clean up the county’s financial problems.

Long recently took Morgan, 53, to court to force him to remove from his ballot statement contentions that Long was responsible for millions of dollars in fines stemming from overbilling of Medicare. Morgan said he merely followed examples given him by the county’s election office and thought he was within limits of the law.

Herbert Gooch, chairman of the political science department at Cal Lutheran University, said running a negative campaign is Morgan’s only real choice.

“Voters have short memories,” he said of the county’s recent problems. “He’s [Morgan] got to etch out a reason they should want to make a change. It’s awful hard to knock off an incumbent.”

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The sprawling 3rd District stretches from suburban Camarillo and parts of Thousand Oaks to tiny Ojai and the agricultural cities of Santa Paula and Fillmore in the Santa Clara Valley. For this reason, the two candidates are confronted with vastly different issues and concerns among voters.

For Santa Paula and Fillmore residents, the debate this election season largely focuses on whether to approve local ordinances similar to the SOAR growth-control initiatives already in place throughout the county. Opponents believe such limits would cripple the cities’ abilities to build their already limited tax bases.

Both Long, a Democrat, and Morgan, a Republican, are fully aware of the importance of Santa Clara Valley constituents in the election. While the largest bloc of the 77,992 registered voters in the district--about 45%--live in Camarillo, another crucial 20% of the vote is concentrated in Santa Paula and Fillmore.

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In their 1996 contest, Morgan dominated the election in Camarillo, but Long’s popularity in the Santa Clara Valley, Ojai and Thousand Oaks gave her the necessary edge.

Morgan for the past four years has trumpeted his support of the SOAR initiatives, and has repeatedly criticized Long for opposing voter-control over development issues. Long co-chaired a committee that recommended preserving agricultural greenbelts through local policies adopted by elected officials.

But this election year Morgan is declining to take a position on the SOAR initiatives in the two Santa Clara Valley cities.

“I’m not going to be an outsider telling those people how to vote,” he said. “It’s an emotional issue that has to be decided by local residents.”

Long opposes the SOAR initiatives in both cities.

“My position has been and remains that I don’t believe you can do land-use planning by a ballot box sound bite.”

At the same time, it is Long, not Morgan, who has worked to slow Santa Paula’s efforts to triple its size by expanding into Adams Canyon--a proposal that has city residents divided.

As a member of the Local Agency Formation Commission, Long was among the dissenters on a 4-3 vote that laid the groundwork for possible annexation of Adams Canyon over the next several years. “I have not yet seen evidence that shows they can provide the infrastructure to go into Adams Canyon,” she said.

Morgan says the city should be allowed to build its tax base, if such expansion also provides for affordable housing and more public recreation areas. He maintains his position doesn’t conflict with his record as a slow-growth proponent, because, he says, building into hillsides is preferable to building on farmland.

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Lawyer Richard Francis, a driving force behind the SOAR policies countywide, said he is disappointed with Morgan, who was an ally on the SOAR debate in Camarillo. Francis said Morgan’s positions this year on Adams Canyon and SOAR seem to be politically calculated to win over voters in an area where Long has done well.

“Mike is courting the Republican vote in the Santa Clara Valley to try to take the wind out of Kathy’s sails, and to do that he has had to do a change on his SOAR position,” Francis said. “But those kind of flip-flops are too transparent for most people. You don’t end up making friends, you end up alienating the ones you had before.”

In other areas, both candidates are staunch backers of law enforcement spending. But Morgan advocates the Sheriff’s Department scaling back from two deputies per patrol car at night to one, in order to better allocate resources. Long wants to maintain the night patrol staffing, arguing it is safer for residents and deputies.

Both candidates support the local ordinance that guarantees the sheriff and district attorney’s offices receive hefty inflationary budget increases on top of the roughly $40 million a year that they and other public safety agencies collect from a local half-cent sales tax. Hufford wants supervisors to consider scaling back the inflationary increases, which come out of the county general fund, to ease the financial burden on other departments during tight fiscal times.

Morgan spent 23 years in law enforcement as a federal probation and pretrial services officer. Despite Morgan’s career background, Long was the one who received the endorsement of Sheriff Bob Brooks and Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury, both Republicans and considered the two most powerful politicians in the county. Long is also endorsed and funded by associations representing sheriff’s deputies, firefighters and correctional officers.

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Long says her four years in office and experience as senior aide to former Supervisor Kildee have solidified her support throughout the district.

Among her key accomplishments, Long lists her work to secure more than $40 million for the county’s future Juvenile Justice Center, efforts to find consensus among farmers, builders, planners and politicians through creation of the Agricultural Policy Working Group, the setting up of satellite offices in the Santa Clara Valley and her work to improve safety along California 126. She also chairs the commission that decides how to spend an estimated $11.7 million a year in cigarette taxes to benefit children countywide.

Of his two decades on the Camarillo City Council, Morgan said he has helped improve the quality of life in his city by supporting slow-growth efforts there and greenbelt agreements with neighboring Oxnard. Morgan said he spearheaded efforts to bring bicycle and motorcycle police to Camarillo, and led the fund-raising effort for the city’s arts pavilion in the mid-1980s. He also believes his work on a citizens’ mail campaign played an important role in bringing the future Cal State University Channel Islands campus to Camarillo.

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Morgan criticizes Long for supporting a 1998 union-backed merger of the county’s mental health and welfare departments, against the advice of the county administrator and legal consultants.

The merger, which was approved on a split 3-2 vote, was later invalidated. The reorganization cost the county $1.57 million in legal and administrative fees and from lost federal reimbursement money during the period the merger was in effect, according to the county auditor.

A federal investigation triggered by the failed merger later determined the county had improperly billed Medicare for nearly a decade. The probe has cost the county more than $25 million in fines, penalties and lawyers’ fees. Morgan has sought to link Long’s merger vote directly to the county’s past financial troubles.

Long says Morgan’s criticism is hypocritical because he was on the Camarillo Council in 1987, when the city lost $25 million in bad investments and was threatened with bankruptcy.

Morgan argues he and his colleagues acted decisively, firing the city treasurer who was responsible for making bad investments, hiring a new city manager and building the city into a prosperous municipality with a popular, lucrative outlet mall and several high-tech companies.

Meanwhile, Long continues to hold a solid lead over Morgan in campaign contributions. At the end of June, the most recent reporting period, Long had raised $130,123, while Morgan collected $26,295, which included a $7,000 personal loan.

Among Long’s supporters are the Service Employees International Union, which was the top contributor to her campaign with $9,950. The Building Industry Assn. of Southern California was next, with $5,000 in donations. Santa Clara Valley Rancher Bob Pinkerton and his wife Donna gave $4,000.

As he struggles to raise funds, Morgan has found help from individuals who have opposed Long since the merger vote.

“I’m aware as a board watcher of what might happen if Kathy Long is elected again, so I went out and emptied out my bank account to give to Mike Morgan,” said Richard Clemence of Ventura, a former sheriff’s deputy who contributed $1,000 to Morgan’s campaign. “He’s done a good job in Camarillo and the people out there like him.”

Morgan has received the endorsement of Supervisor Frank Schillo, who has also criticized Long for her merger vote and was upset when she refused his request to be placed on an economic development board he helped create.

But Morgan acknowledges he is relying heavily on public sentiment against Long in the wake of the county’s recent financial and management troubles.

“The people who made decisions during that time have to be held responsible,” he said. “My opponent was one of them.”

3rd Supervisorial District

The district is made up of 77,992 registered voters in Camarillo, Fillmore, Ojai, Santa Paula and portions of Thousand Oaks, with Republicans outnumbering Democrats, 45% to 37%.

Kathy Long

Age: 50

Residence: Camarillo resident 12 years.

Education: Bachelor’s degree in administration, Eastern Michigan University, 1972.

Background: Chairwoman of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors, Long was elected in 1996. She previously served as senior administrator for now-retired Supervisor Maggie Kildee, and before that as an assistant to former Los Angeles Councilwoman Pat Russell. She is past president of the Camarillo Chamber of Commerce, and chairs a newly formed commission charged with distributing cigarette tax dollars to children’s programs countywide. She is also co-owner of a family home pest control business, Fleabusters.

Issues: Restore and maintain fiscal stability in county government, including passing an ordinance strengthening the county administrators powers, and recruiting a permanent administrator. Retain the county’s $260 million tobacco settlement and dedicate settlement dollars to health care. Continue opposition to Newhall Ranch housing development. See through the construction of the county’s Juvenile Justice Center. Build tourism industry in the Santa Clara Valley.

Personal: Married to Randy Long, with a 10-year-old son, Austin.

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Mike Morgan

Age: 53

Residence: Camarillo resident 40 years.

Education: Master’s degree in public administration from USC in 1973; bachelor’s degree in psychology from Cal State Long Beach in 1971

Background: Camarillo City Councilman since 1980, and mayor in 1983 and 1995, Morgan helped craft the city’s slow-growth policy and was instrumental in raising funds to establish the city’s arts pavilion. Retired after 23 years as a federal probation and pretrial services officer. He worked the past two years as a consultant to a builder on redevelopment projects. Owns a restaurant in Fullerton run by his son. Morgan ran unsuccessfully against Long in 1996.

Issues: Restore and maintain fiscal stability in county government. Says his opponent should be blamed for a federal investigation into improper Medicare billing that cost the county millions of dollars. Proposes the county share a portion of its $260 million tobacco settlement revenue with private hospitals. Wants to protect public safety budget from cuts.

Personal: Married to Donna Morgan, with a daughter and a son, both college age.