If it’s so fine, why are we so nervous?

They might as well hang a giant portrait of Bob Citron in the Orange County Board of Supervisors chamber. Like a family patriarch forever staring down from the walls at his lineage, no one’s presence can dominate the proceedings like that of the former treasurer who led the county into bankruptcy in 1994.

Citron was there again in spirit Tuesday, like the Ghost of December Past, as the board grappled with the year-old tenure of embattled Treasurer Chriss Street.

Things are going just fine, Street told an increasingly antsy board. But in the post-Citron world, telling supervisors that things are fine sometimes sounds the same as advising them to run for their lives. That’s because Citron, with 24 years on the job under his belt and reelected in June 1994, told a fawning Board of Supervisors that summer that things were just fine.

By winter, and with a $7.6-billion portfolio under his command, Citron’s increasingly risky investments brought the fund down. The county declared bankruptcy Dec. 6 and announced an overall loss of $1.6 billion.

So, when Street -- currently answering district attorney subpoenas and under multiple investigations and explaining why some of the county’s investments were put on credit watch a couple weeks ago -- tells the board not to worry, it worries.

At Tuesday’s meeting, it was as if Citron were on the agenda.

Nick Berardino, the head of the county employees union, invoked Citron’s legacy.

Supervisor Janet Nguyen alluded to Citron by asking about Merrill Lynch, the investment firm that advised him the most.

Street then had to explain why things are different from the Citron era.

Supervisor John Moorlach is a perpetual reminder of Citron, both as his election opponent in 1994 and the man who succeeded him in office.

And Supervisor Bill Campbell clearly had Citron on the brain.

“A previous board said, ‘No problem,’ ” Campbell said, “not based on the board’s great financial knowledge, but just because they were assured there was no problem. I don’t want to be in that situation where I say there’s no problem, because I do not have the capacity to investigate [the various investments] and determine the risk of that.”

Campbell no doubt remembers the public pounding the supervisors took for their inattentiveness to Citron’s investment strategies. So, with three of his colleagues, he voted to hire an independent firm to review the “risk posture” of Street’s investments. In a nice irony, Moorlach, who has been Street’s harshest critic on the board, said another level of oversight wasn’t necessary and cast the lone dissenting vote.

As if Street didn’t have enough problems, he informed the board two weeks ago that some of the “structured investment vehicles” he’d invested in had been put on credit watch by Moody’s Investors Service, a financial analysis and credit ratings firm.

Street told the supervisors Tuesday that the problem was under control and that he had full confidence in the investments. The board was less cheery, seemingly worried both about the market scare and Street’s lack of advance notice to them two weeks ago that there might be storm clouds forming.

Berardino said Tuesday he was getting bad vibes of the deja vu kind. Referring to Street’s relative calm two weeks ago, he said, “The don’t-worry message was eerily similar to the message that emanated from the halls of this building 13 years ago, a message that was followed by the largest municipal bankruptcy in [U.S.] history.”

He urged the board to take away Street’s investment powers. Saying he didn’t know what it would take to get the board to act, Berardino said he hoped “it’s not the proverbial body in the trunk.”

I get the feeling Street would like to crack some heads. Still, he kept his, on Tuesday, and reiterated that the SIV issue appeared headed for a happy outcome.

He said last week that investing isn’t for the timid, nor for Monday-morning quarterbacks.

And after all its squirming, the board seemed to agree. Sort of. It left Street’s power intact but got on record that it’s not asleep at the wheel. In a nice turn of phrase, Supervisor Pat Bates told Street that he’s on “credit watch,” but she might just as well have used “Citron watch” instead.

An uncertain investment market and a treasurer with issues are a bad combination for any post-1994 Orange County supervisor.

A little too much history, if you know what I mean.

All of which puts Street in a tough spot. He’s got a board ready to sack him on a moment’s notice, but that still likes his investment results and wants him to deliver the goods.

“I’m here to deliver comforting news,” Street said to the supes on Tuesday.

I’m not sure “comforting” is a word they associate with him these days.

--

Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. 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.