ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Housecleaning With a Feeble Broom

Even in disciplining two managers who lived high on the hog, the Santa Margarita Water District’s board of directors made sure that its executives made out. Some housecleaning this is turning out to be.

Walter W. (Bill) Knitz, the district’s general manager, and Michael P. Lord, his assistant, will continue to collect their generous salaries and benefits, even though they have been suspended pending investigations by the Orange County district attorney’s office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

As first reported in The Times, both Knitz and Lord claimed extravagant business expenses and continued to recommend that the board give contracts to vendors who had given them gifts or meals in excess of state-mandated limits.

Both will continue to collect salaries and benefits totaling more than $130,000 each. The two managers will be on call but won’t have to do any of the usual heavy lifting while the board tries to find an interim manager.

What a deal for them. And what a feeble message from a board of directors that had suggested correctly a need for stricter accountability and spending guidelines. Taking care of one’s own is apparently ingrained deep in the culture of the water district.

Operating beyond much scrutiny in the past, district operation has been fueled by perks. Business has been done this way for so long that the district can’t even remove two executives without also looking after them at the same time.

Perhaps one reason the board did not suspend the two managers without pay, as might have been appropriate pending the investigations, is that the elected directors themselves have been making out pretty well under the generous system.

For example, board Chairman Don B. Schone has twice charged district ratepayers for $275 in expenses he incurred while taking part in a horseback riding outing.

According to Knitz’s expense accounts, Schone, board Vice Chairman Richard Boultinghouse and board attorney Fritz Straddling frequently ate lunch at an expensive French restaurant in Mission Viejo just before board meetings.

And guess who signed off on Schone’s horseback rides? None other than Knitz himself, who district officials say normally approved Schone’s expense reports, while Schone approved his.

Everybody knows the name of this game. It’s called, “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” Clearly, this district must tighten up its expenditure standards both for managers and board members.