Dump the Manager? Not in This Game

When a Major League Baseball team flounders, the manager typically takes the fall. The time-honored refrain is, “You can’t fire 25 players.”

More often than not, firing the manager doesn’t improve things. Check the 2002 final standings of the Cubs, Tigers, Rockies, Brewers and Indians.

Unfair to dump the manager instead of the players? Most of the time, yes.

You’ve got to hand it to Orange County government; it is taking pains not to make baseball’s mistake.

No sir. It sees one of its teams in trouble -- we’re talking big, multimillion-dollar trouble -- but rather than dumping the manager, it decides it can fire the players. And then stand and salute as the manager takes early retirement with a pension, something not available to all the laid-off underlings.

How about a big Bronx cheer for our local heroes?

The county team in trouble is the planning department run by career bureaucrat Thomas Mathews. Think of the season the Angels had in 2002; the planning department had exactly the opposite kind.

The department reported a deficit of $8 million in the last six months of the year, about the length of a baseball season. To compensate, it announced 3 1/2 weeks ago that it was laying off 39 employees. A week after that, Mathews announced he was taking advantage of a new retirement plan, agreed upon by supervisors for certain longtime employees, that would bump up his pension.

Things aren’t nearly so rosy for his departing workers. As of Friday afternoon, six of the 39 had been placed in other departments, according to employee union official Nick Berardino. The county is looking for places for the others, but nothing is guaranteed.

“There are 18,000 county employees and we’re talking about 39 people,” Berardino says. “And in this situation, this is a layoff that was not created by anything the employees did. This is a layoff where there have obviously been management problems that created it, and the employees are kind of victimized.”

For now, Berardino’s focus is on nuts and bolts. He thinks the county should find jobs for all of the displaced employees. And he’s not convinced the layoffs are justified or in conformance with the employees’ contract with the county.

However that plays out, what lingers is the uncertainty and unfairness that faces American workers -- especially in the face of corporate or managerial failures. Giants like Enron and WorldCom toppled, burying employees in the rubble. Orange County need look no further back than the 1994 bankruptcy that resulted in hundreds of people being laid off.

“I think it’s unfortunate that we will be having employees who are not going to be able to leave county service with a pension or with health care benefits,” Berardino says. “They are just going to be leaving without a job, and they and their families will be subjected to a tragic ending to their careers.”

But just as baseball teams can be revived, so perhaps can the planning department. County officials in the last two weeks have mentioned an “action plan” to stop the bleeding.

The proverbial clock is ticking. The layoffs take effect Thursday. Berardino says the 39 employees run the gamut of length of service, with the longest being a 24-year veteran.

Coincidentally, Mathews’ golden parachute opens Thursday. After the deluge of recent months, he will float back to earth while some of his employees may crash-land.

For some reason, I’m thinking of Tom Hanks’ line from “A League of Their Own”: “There’s no crying in baseball.”

Ain’t it the truth. As for county government ... well, that’s a totally different movie.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.