County executive resigning

Johnny Johnston told the Ventura County Board of Supervisors on Friday that he is stepping down after seven years as the county’s chief executive, ending a 40-year career in public service.

Amiable and savvy, Johnston is credited with returning financial and structural stability to a $1.7-billion county government that at one point was in such disarray that a predecessor declared it ungovernable and left after only four days on the job.

What’s more, Johnston has earned nearly universal respect among the county government’s rank-and-file workers, its department managers and even elected officials with whom he has crossed swords.

“Even when we disagreed, he was always a gentleman and he always kept his word,” said Sheriff Bob Brooks, who along with Dist. Atty. Gregory Totten sued Johnston and county supervisors in a high-profile budget battle that lasted several years. “We have developed a good friendship and I’m going to sorely miss him.”

Johnston’s bosses on the board also showered praise on the man known for easing tense moments with quips or folksy anecdotes.

“His intelligence, his disposition and his experience are stellar,” Supervisor Linda Parks said. “He’s so good it will be hard to find someone to replace him.”

Added Supervisor Steve Bennett, who arrived on the board just months before Johnston took the top job: “The complete skill set that he brought, you’ll never find that again.”

Johnston, who turns 65 in December, said he will stay on the job until the end of March, allowing supervisors five months to find a successor.

Johnston said Friday that he has been thinking about retirement for a couple of years, now that government finances are solid and turf wars that once raged among department heads have calmed.

It’s time to clear the way for others, he said.

“I love the job and don’t really want to go,” he said. “But it needs to be done.”

When Johnston assumed the top office in April 2001, budget reserves were close to zero. Layoffs and service reductions loomed on the horizon. This year, reserves approached 10% of discretionary funding, and Wall Street showed its approval by giving the county top marks for credit worthiness.

Supervisors last year opened a second public hospital in Santa Paula, and the county’s public health system in recent years has become a national model. Unionized employees rarely fill the Board of Supervisors’ room to protest labor agreements, as they did in the past. And long-raging battles over departmental budgets have settled to a whimper.

“He really leaves us in good shape,” said Herb Gooch, a professor of public policy and administration at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks. “It’s more than just the budget. It’s a smoothly operating, 8,000-employee system and it wasn’t always that way.”

Johnston said he shares credit with the supervisors, who “stood tall with me” in implementing policy changes that brought about fiscal health.

Shortly before Johnston arrived, the board voted to beef up the authority of the county chief’s office.

Johnston immediately flexed his muscles after taking the top seat, asking the board to change his title from “chief administrator” to “chief executive officer.” At the time, Johnston said the change would reinforce his desire to run county government in a collegial way, but with his hand firmly on the wheel.

“Symbols are the way we communicate,” he said in May 2001. “At this early stage of my career, I wanted to communicate something.”

One board member didn’t share his philosophy. Supervisor John Flynn fought the change, calling it an assault on his own elective power.

Flynn has frequently clashed with Johnston over issues, particularly a decision to build a boating safety center at Channel Island Harbor.

“We’ve had differences over the harbor and I’m still very much dissatisfied that there has not been the oversight that needs to be given there,” Flynn said. “But he’s a really hard guy not to like.”

Johnston started out as assistant city manager of Compton in 1967, later taking similar posts in Artesia and Ojai. He came to Ventura County government in the 1970s and set up the General Services Agency, which runs the county’s parks and maintenance functions.

For a few years in the mid-1980s, he went into the private sector, building affordable homes in Arizona and California. After retiring briefly, he took a job with the Los Angeles County Superior Court system as the chief deputy executive officer for operations.

It was his job to run “Camp O.J.” for the global media that converged on Los Angeles for the infamous murder trial.

In 1998, he was recruited back to Ventura County. When supervisors began looking for a new chief administrator to replace retiring chief Lyn Koester, Johnston threw his hat into the ring.

But he was passed over for David Baker, who had served as the county chief in San Joaquin County. After just four days, however, Baker packed his bags and fled Ventura County, leaving behind a blistering, six-page assessment of problems.

Baker cited a cash-flow crisis, bureaucratic infighting and a special funding law that gave an ever-increasing chunk of the county’s discretionary budget to public safety agencies as his reasons for leaving. He said he doubted the board had the will to make substantive changes.

Supervisors brought in a sage veteran, former Los Angeles County Administrator Harry Hufford, to manage county government through the crisis. After 14 months, he handed over the reins to Johnston, who had won the support of the board.

Within five months, Johnston had weathered a labor strike and was urging the board to resist giving the sheriff’s deputies’ union a generous pension enhancement. Johnston called it his “finger in the dike” moment.

“The consequences if we had given those benefits, over a lifetime, would easily have been $1 billion,” Johnston said. “We didn’t have that to give.”

In later years, Brooks and Totten sued to maintain the special funding law that had protected law enforcement from budget cuts. After years of litigation, the county board and the two agency heads worked out a settlement, brokered by Johnston’s office.

Supervisor Kathy Long said the agreement was possible because Johnston was by then a trusted figure.

“His core values are about good government and leading by example,” Long said. “There’s no fudging on principles.”

catherine.saillant@latimes.com