Longtime Rivals Battle Again for Board of Supervisors Seat

Just last year, two-term Ventura County Supervisor Kathy Long, 53, was seen as a shoo-in for a third term. No viable challenger appeared eager to take her on and no single issue seemed likely to stir the public against her.

While conventional wisdom pegged it as a contest with barely detectable signs of life, the matchup in the county’s 3rd District has turned into a tough confrontation between Long and her perennial rival, Mike Morgan.

With the March 2 election a week away, Long again is facing Morgan, 56, a veteran Camarillo City Council member who battled her for the seat in 1996 and 2000, losing by just more than 1,000 votes on his second try. On top of that, Long is being denounced by the influential law enforcement community that supported her previous bids -- a group of organizations and officials that can sway opinion in a county where low crime rates are a source of civic pride.

At a time when the county’s sheriff and district attorney are suing the Board of Supervisors over budget restrictions, the election will pose a crucial question to voters in the 3rd District, which spans a huge swath of inland Ventura County. They must decide whom to trust more: law-enforcement officials who predict danger on the streets without hefty budget increases, or county supervisors like Long who forecast dire times for other county services if law enforcement gets what it wants.

“This has really turned into a race,” said Herb Gooch, a California Lutheran University political science professor and an avid observer of local politics. “The public-safety issue seems to be giving Mike some traction. Six months ago, I don’t think anyone anticipated this.”

The district stretches from the subdivisions of Newbury Park to the rugged backcountry of Lockwood Valley, taking in Camarillo, Port Hueneme, Fillmore, Santa Paula and Piru. The Ventura County Sheriff’s Deputies Assn., the county’s largest law-enforcement union, has vowed to secure it for Morgan, drawing on a political action fund of at least $200,000.

For Morgan, a retired federal probation officer, the race is about monumental blunders by county supervisors that have jeopardized public safety.

In voter forums and interviews, he ticks off a list of county law-enforcement cuts that he says have been forced upon the public by Long’s fiscal irresponsibility: the shutdown of the women’s jail in Ojai, the dismantling of a gang-suppression unit, the reduction of hours at the sheriff’s East County Station, the early release of nonviolent inmates. He hammers her over a vote restricting law enforcement’s retirement perks and suggests officers are leaving for better-paying jobs elsewhere.

“If you’re going to weaken those things, there will be ramifications,” Morgan said. “Do you want your public safety to stay strong?”

Sheriff Bob Brooks is even more direct.

“If Kathy Long can do that much damage as a ‘friend’ of public safety, I’d hate to see what an enemy could do,” he wrote in a newspaper commentary.

Despite his support of Long in 2000, Brooks last fall persuaded Morgan to make another run for the supervisor’s job. Morgan also has been endorsed by former Sheriff Larry Carpenter, Santa Paula’s Police Department, the California Youth Authority Correctional Officers Assn. and other law enforcement groups.

For Long, the opposition from law enforcement is more about politics than public safety. The budget cuts forced upon the sheriff reflect sound management and have not made life in Ventura County any riskier, she contends.

“At every forum I’ve asked: Do you feel less safe than you did seven years ago?,” she said. “No one says yes.”

She also points out that crime in Ventura County has risen, but mainly in Oxnard, Simi Valley and Ventura -- cities with independent police departments that have no ties to the county budget.

The brouhaha over funding goes back to a 1995 ordinance guaranteeing that all revenue from a half-cent sales tax go to the sheriff, the district attorney, the public defender and the probation department. In addition, supervisors agreed to dip into the general fund to pay for inflationary increases in those departments.

Six years later, Long sided with the 3-2 majority on the board of supervisors to limit such increases. With salary and benefit increases, the hikes had been running from 7% to 10% per year; the new formula is linked to the Consumer Price Index, capping growth at about 3.75%.

“It was a tough vote but we had to do it,” Long said. “They were asking for more than our discretionary funds allowed us to give.”

Last year, she said, the old funding formula would have cost the cash-strapped county $17 million instead of $10.5 million -- an especially bitter pill with state cuts nipping at the county’s budget.

But Morgan and his supporters see the supervisors’ decision as a betrayal of the voters, pointing out that the original ordinance was favored by some 50,000 county residents who signed petitions for it.

Long and Morgan both live in Camarillo, but that’s where their similarities end.

While the supervisor’s race is nonpartisan, Long is a Democrat and Morgan a Republican. In the district, Democrats outnumber Republicans by six percentage points.

Morgan prides himself on roll-up-your-sleeves community activism. He tells how he went door to door to raise money for the city park’s bandstand -- and later went up on the roof to help install the lights.

Long, a former aide to ex-Supervisor Maggie Erickson Kildee, casts herself as a seasoned insider who knows how to make regional government work effectively. Before moving to Ventura County in 1988, she held a staff position with Los Angeles City Council member Pat Russell.

At a meeting last week in tiny Piru, Morgan offered residents a few practical suggestions on dealing with community problems, such as recruiting volunteer crossing guards for a dangerous intersection.

For her part, Long urged residents not to grow impatient with the complex processes of government, pointing out that she has helped bring them $7 million in upgraded sewage treatment facilities, a new town square and other civic improvements.

Morgan tends to speak with passion, but sometimes stumbles over his words and comes up with malapropisms like “poor mismanagement.” Long speaks in the measured tones of an administrator, alluding to “fiscal challenges” and “mitigation plans.”

A fixture in Camarillo, Morgan has been a City Council member for 23 years. He also served three terms as mayor. Much of his support in his previous bids for county office came from the city where he still campaigns by handing out business cards in front of the post office.

Long has found backing in the Santa Clara Valley, where she has dealt with problems like the shutdown of the area’s only hospital.

“I’ve found her to be dedicated to our community,” said Gabino Aguirre, Santa Paula’s mayor. “Where other legislators kind of ignore us, she’s always done what she can to resolve issues and bring services in.”

Morgan is more critical of Long’s record. In campaign appearances, he never fails to bring up her support for the botched merger of the mental health and social services departments.

The mistake cost the county between $15 million and $38 million, depending on who’s doing the figuring. In any event, it was money that “could have been used for your sidewalks,” Morgan told the crowd at the Piru meeting.

Long acknowledged the restructuring was a bad move: “I should have done further homework,” she said.

But she also points out that Morgan was a Camarillo council member in the 1980s when the city treasury was drained by $25 million in risky investments.

Morgan bristles at Long’s suggestion that he could have kept a closer eye on city finances.

“She’s comparing apples and oranges,” he said. “We had a treasurer who was keeping two sets of books.”

How the county’s books will look when the next anticipated round of budget cuts comes down from the state is unknown.

Morgan shies away from questions about how the county should react, saying he would need more information. Long, too, is uncertain, but she’s bracing for the worst.

“There will be pain felt, employees laid off and programs shut down,” she said.

Supporters like Camarillo Mayor Don Waunch say that Long will make the best of a situation whose effects could range from bad to disastrous.

“She’s got the experience that’s needed right now,” he said. “The entire board is working well together and doing an excellent job. I don’t think that now is the time to make a lot of changes.”

But Pat Buckley, president of the deputies union and a sheriff’s sergeant based in Thousand Oaks, disagrees. Change is exactly what the board of supervisors needs, he contends.

“It’s just lunacy that the sheriff and the district attorney have had to sue the supervisors,” he said. “It’s beyond my comprehension.”