Shift in Clerk’s Office Studied

Ventura County Clerk-Recorder Richard Dean is blasting a proposal to shift control of the Board of Supervisors’ agenda, records and minutes from his office to the county manager’s office, saying it would be like letting “a fox in the henhouse.”

Such a move would give supervisors “total control” over what appears on meeting documents and could diminish the public’s ability to access government records, Dean argued in a letter to the Board of Supervisors.

“Appointed county managers who serve at the will of the board are good people, but their jobs and livelihoods are on the line,” Dean wrote. “In the end, they will either do what they are told (right or wrong), ignore the order and risk being fired, or they resign.”

Supervisors are expected to take up the issue at today’s board meeting.

Supervisor Kathy Long in January asked County Executive Officer Johnny Johnston to study the possibility of moving the clerk of the board’s duties out of Dean’s office. Supervisors Steve Bennett and Judy Mikels backed Long’s request.

Long said it makes more sense for those duties to be carried out under the executive officer’s authority--a model followed by 41 other California counties.

In his report, Johnston did not make a recommendation on the move but laid out the steps that would have to be taken. Johnston said there could be some cost savings.

Dean could not be reached for comment Monday. But in his letter to supervisors, he noted that the county’s elected clerk-recorder has had responsibility for the clerk of the board’s duties for more than a century. In addition to preparing the agenda for Board of Supervisors meetings, the clerk keeps records of minutes and updates the county government’s Web page.

“The current structure has served the citizens of Ventura County very well for almost 130 years,” Dean wrote.

Mikels, however, said she has long been concerned about Dean’s management of the $329,000, four-employee division. The system of public access to records has not been sufficiently modernized, Mikels said.

And there have been times when she has had difficulty placing items on the agenda, the supervisor said. Mikels dismissed Dean’s claim that supervisors might try to keep controversial issues from public view if the change were made.

Several laws and regulations, including California’s Ralph M. Brown Act, protect the public’s interests, she said.

“There’s no way that it’s going to become unbalanced,” she said. “This idea that the board will manipulate the public’s access to information is absolute hogwash.”