Supervisors Prepare for a Year of Challenges

Hire a full-time chief administrator. Renegotiate union contracts. Seal a truce in a decade-long hospital war.

Those are some of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors’ priorities for 2001, a year that will see the addition of newly elected board member Steve Bennett and the departure of Susan Lacey.

Also on tap:

* Choose a construction company to build a $65-million juvenile justice facility on budget and on time.

* Create a conservation district that would enable the county to buy land with taxpayer dollars and keep it undeveloped.

“We’ve got a lot of work to make sure the house is in order,” Supervisor Kathy Long said.

A tall order, considering supervisors have set the deadline for many of their votes not for Dec. 31 but for April 1, when well-regarded interim Chief Administrator Harry Hufford’s contract is up.

Supervisor Frank Schillo, expected to be named board chairman Tuesday, said he is looking forward to the challenge.

“Last year was a downer, a lot of negative things without resolution,” Schillo said. “I see this as a year of getting solutions to problems we’ve had in the past and progressing to bigger and better things.”

But county union chief Barry Hammitt warned that with labor talks ahead, the next few months may not be pretty.

“We’ve been gearing up to make it . . . a contentious year,” said Hammitt, head of the local Service Employees International Union, whose members include about 3,700 county employees.

“We haven’t been hesitant to tell our members they need to be prepared to take concerted activities against their employer,” he said. “If that means a strike, they shouldn’t be afraid to put away some extra money and set aside a few extra cans of beans.”

Although one seat on the board is changing, its ideological leanings should remain unchanged. Like the retiring Lacey, Bennett is a former educator who is generally regarded as liberal.

But on a five-member board sometimes divided on spending and policy, Bennett’s votes on major issues could be crucial.

The former Ventura councilman crafted the county’s slow-growth policies known as SOAR. Outspoken during election season, he has since been guarded about his positions on issues.

Herb Gooch, chairman of the political science department at Cal Lutheran University, believes the county is in better shape than last year or the year before, after emerging from a spate of federal inquiries and fines that dragged down finances, reputations and morale.

“The signs look pretty decent that we could have a year of a fair amount of harmony and progress,” he said. “The issues that are out there don’t look overwhelming.”

But Gooch tempered his optimism.

“You never know, especially with new people coming in, who you get as the new CAO,” said Gooch. “At least that person coming in will be following someone who has done a pretty credible job of rebuilding trust.”

Hufford, a veteran of Los Angeles County government who also spent time in the private sector, came on board a year ago to stabilize the fiscally troubled and politically strained county.

He was brought in after the sudden departure of David Baker, who quit after only four days on the job.

Under Hufford’s leadership, the county avoided a $5-million budget shortfall, saw its good credit rating restored and hung on to a $260-million tobacco settlement that Ventura’s Community Memorial Hospital had tried to transfer to itself and other private hospitals.

Supervisors have credited Hufford with quelling political gamesmanship and infighting as well. They even agreed to increase his powers at their own expense in an effort to maintain order in county government--something Supervisor John Flynn said he would like to undo in the coming year.

Most board members agree they must replace Hufford with someone of comparable experience, personableness and bargaining skills if they are to sustain the progress made during his term.

A consulting firm has begun a statewide search for candidates, but no names have been made public. Hufford said he is particularly interested in a couple of candidates but would not say whom.

“This job is supposed to make hard decisions and take tough positions,” he said. “This board needs someone who is willing to do that. It’s going to take strength and knowledge. This is not a place for beginners.”

Flynn, for one, wants to find a replacement from within the county’s ranks.

“If they have the ability and the character and the intelligence to do the job, why ignore them?” he said.

Supervisors hope to begin interviewing candidates by the end of this month. They intend to hire a full-time replacement for the 69-year-old Hufford by March to allow for a smooth transition.

Long has hinted at the possibility the board would try to keep Hufford past April 1 in some role, perhaps as a health care consultant. No formal proposal has been made, though, and Hufford declined to discuss the possibility.

Meanwhile, Hufford has been the county’s point man on two complex sets of negotiations supervisors would like to resolve this year.

One set of talks deals with whether to scale back the annual budget increases that public safety departments are guaranteed by county ordinance 4088. Hufford has pushed the matter despite resistance from the sheriff and district attorney, saying without some cuts the county’s finances could be jeopardized in the long run. Board members have been divided over the issue.

The second set of negotiations aims at a truce between the county hospital and Community Memorial, the county’s nemesis for most of the past decade.

Both hospitals must come up with tens of millions of dollars for improvements or new construction to meet earthquake safety standards by 2008. County leaders and Community Memorial officials are now considering ways to work together to pay for those upgrades. One possibility discussed is a merger.

Also this year, supervisors must carry out a promise, made just before the defeat of Measure O, the tobacco funds transfer effort, to share some of each year’s $10-million tobacco settlement installment with private hospitals for health-care programs. Committees are being established to decide how that should be done.

Supervisors fear fragile talks with public safety officials and hospital officials could collapse if agreements aren’t reached before Hufford leaves.

With or without Hufford, Schillo doesn’t believe supervisors will scale back public safety spending.

“There’s probably not enough support on the board to do that,” Schillo said. “There will be some minor changes that will come from the district attorney and the sheriff.”

Meanwhile, sheriff’s deputies, whose benefits and cost-of-living increases already are the envy of other county employees, are in contract negotiations asking for a pension increase.

The Service Employees International Union contract, which represents most other county employees outside the Sheriff’s Department, runs out in late June. The 10% to 12% pay increases director Hammitt plans to seek could cost the county at least $12.5 million more per year. And the deputies’ push has Hammitt gearing up for a fight.

“It’s a growing concern the board will cave on a 3-2 vote and give the sheriff’s deputies everything they want, and that’s going to be a hit on the rest of county government,” Hammitt said.

“If the Board of Supervisors says, ‘No way are we going to give a cost-of-living to [the union] employees . . . but we will to the cops . . . there’s going to be big problems.”

Hammitt said he hopes to renegotiate in early March, while Hufford, who had experience dealing with unions in Los Angeles, is still around.

“Harry understands government,” Hammitt said. “He understands that if you don’t take care of all of the pieces, none of the pieces work.”

While the service employees union supports a majority of the board, Hammitt said that is no guarantee of success. “We don’t hold out any hopes that just because we’ve endorsed someone they’re going to bend over backward and give us whatever we want.”

On some remaining priorities for the board, timing is dictated not by Hufford’s departure but by outside factors.

Flynn wants to get state lawmakers this spring to sponsor legislation creating a land conservation district he and Schillo proposed. Flynn said work must begin now to get a detailed spending plan to voters by 2002. He said it could take months to poll county residents on what lands they want to protect.

And Long said supervisors need to lock in a construction contract for the juvenile justice complex by June to get it built by 2003, the deadline set by the state.

One issue Long believes may be delayed until next year is the fate of the massive Newhall Ranch housing project proposed just across the county’s eastern boundary in Los Angeles County. Ventura County officials are fighting the project because of traffic and environmental concerns. A judge’s ruling last year postponed the project while the developers conduct additional study.