In 2006 Placentia, Shades of 1994

The Orange County Board of Supervisors, circa 1994, holds the local record for official cluelessness. Like DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, it’s a record that’ll never be broken.

So as not to ruin your lunch, I’ll keep the historical reminder brief. As the county treasurer was taking the local investment portfolio into the toilet, the five supervisors stood by in silence. Only when the county declared the biggest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history did the supes realize that, oops, they should have been paying attention.

To say they were asleep at the switch would be too charitable. They were in a coma. One of them, Tom Riley, famously had said of the treasurer’s earlier success on Wall Street: “I don’t know how the hell he does it, but he makes us look good.”

That is, until he made them look bad. Or, at least, very inept.

Why, you ask, would I dredge up this stuff on a nice day like this? Let the past stay past.

My thoughts exactly, until reading last week that Placentia City Council members had told a county grand jury that they had no idea what had been going on right under their noses, as two other ranking officials pushed the OnTrac rail project that drove the city to the brink of bankruptcy.

A Times reporter reviewed transcripts of the grand jury testimony, which revealed that council members were kept out of the loop as the project moved forward.

Dumb question: How can a city council be kept out of the loop?

Answer: Only if they want to be.

There’s no elected official in Orange County who doesn’t know the debacle of the ’94 bankruptcy. They’re free to commit any mistake they want, but not paying attention to the company store isn’t one of them.

And yet, here is Placentia council veteran Norman Eckenrode reportedly telling the grand jury: “You were kind of the mushroom theory of management. You get information on a need-to-know basis. And if you wanted more, you had to dig.”

Long ago, Eckenrode punched out another council member, so he’s not exactly a shrinking violet. Why did he allow himself to be shined on in the dark?

Hindsight is great, and I realize that council members aren’t experts on everything. They put a lot of trust in their bureaucratic managers. In Placentia’s case, that may have been an errant trust, in that the grand jury has indicted two of them in connection with the OnTrac project.

You’d think the county bankruptcy would have taught supervisors and local council members never to trust anyone again. In Placentia, the grand jury testimony indicated that council members rarely asked about OnTrac and didn’t get agendas or minutes from meetings about it. One city official testified that council members were encouraged to avoid attending meetings on the project.

Who knows whether any council members could have ferreted out the truth, had they bothered to check things out? It sounds like they were afraid of the bureaucrats they were supposed to be in charge of. Or, maybe, they just weren’t interested.

Way back when, when the bankruptcy was raging, I suggested (in a nice way) that the two remaining supervisors turn in their badges and join the other three in post-supervisor retirement. You know, if only to show some accountability.

They opted not to.

I won’t bother with that suggestion again.

When Riley retired, one of the things he said was “I wish I had listened just a bit more, questioned just a bit more and trusted just a bit less.”

That should have been posted in every council chamber in Orange County.

Too late for Placentia, which has secured its place in local lore.

No, its members weren’t in the same league as the supervisors of yesteryear, but when it comes to incompetence, they have nothing to be ashamed of.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana

.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.