New Budget Chief Gets Prepared to Trim the Fat : Finances: Sally Reed hopes her personable style and tightfisted ways will work as well in Los Angeles County as they did in Santa Clara County.

SAN JOSE —  Sally Reed, the Santa Clara County executive tapped to run Los Angeles County’s vast bureaucracy, said she plans to tackle her new job the same way she always has:

“My way,” she said, first with a straight face, and then with the easy smile that is a key to her personable, one-on-one style of management.

Reed, 50, has built a reputation as a tightfisted, hands-on manager who goes on a first-name basis with many of Santa Clara County’s 15,000 employees, and who brought order to a bureaucracy spinning out of control when she was hired 12 years ago.

“It used to be called Santa Claus County because we were just giving things away,” said Reed in an interview last week in her large but simple office atop the Santa Clara County Government Center. “That changed my first year here.”

Now Reed is bringing her no-nonsense style of management to Los Angeles County, the largest, most complex county government in the nation--and possibly the most troubled as well.

She will take over as chief administrative officer, at a salary of $174,000 a year, on Oct. 18.

Officials are hoping that she can bring greater order and discipline to their troubled finances and rebuild a management team rocked by the forced resignation of former Chief Administrative Officer Richard B. Dixon in February.

But Los Angeles County, with a $13.5-billion budget, is about a tenfold jump in size from Reed’s current operation. And though Reed said she is ready to dig in and bring her direct style of management with her, she acknowledges that there are some large questions to be answered.

“Can your style work in an organization of 84,000 people?”’ a friend asked Reed the other day. “Well, that’s what we’re going to find out,” Reed answered.

Colleagues say she is a master of budgeting, an eloquent advocate and enjoys a squeaky clean reputation. She is confident, stubborn, tough and smart.

But there is another side to those traits, some Santa Clara County colleagues say. Privately, some county officials say she can be autocratic and even vindictive to the rare bureaucrat who crosses her or fails to keep her properly informed.

“People either like her tremendously or hate her. No one is neutral,” said Santa Clara County Supervisor Zoe Lofgren. “She is tenacious, and that can lead to conflict. . . . But for the most part, there is a great deal of loyalty and devotion from the departments she leads.”

Two of the more public controversies to shake Santa Clara County government in recent years provided insight into both sides of Reed, several officials said.

In one, Reed carried on a bitter 10-year battle with the head of the county hospital system.

Reed complained that Medical Center Executive Director Robert Sillen was operating too independently--though she admitted he was doing a first-rate job of administering the hospital. Sillen could not be reached for comment, but some county officials said the conflict was just a case of two headstrong managers disagreeing about who was in charge. In a showdown before the Board of Supervisors, Reed tried to fire Sillen. She lost. The medical center chief now reports directly to the Board of Supervisors.

In another case, Reed refused to fire a loyal but controversial public health official, despite widespread calls for her resignation. “She tends to try to protect the people she’s hired,” said Supervisor Rod Diridon. “That could be a fault, but the people who work for her work hard for her.”

Indeed, Reed’s method of working closely with managers is the key to her success, she says.

Reed meets weekly with each member of the Board of Supervisors, weekly with most of the 25 department heads and twice weekly with her senior staff.

Her office door is open for a part of every workday--from 5:30 p.m. to around 7 p.m., when she goes home. Any employee with a question or problem can stop in during that period and get an audience.

“That does two things,” she said. “It gives (employees) access so they are not waiting around for Sally to decide on something. But it also means that they have no excuse for not telling me what’s going on.”

Sometimes Reed has a peculiar effect on co-workers.

Santa Clara County Dist. Atty. George Kennedy usually keeps a picture of Reed on his bookshelf. But on some days, visitors note that the picture is face down or even in a drawer.

Similarly, Sheriff Charles Gillingham praises Reed’s ability to cut costs, even though cuts to his department have angered many deputies.

“She can squeeze a nickel so tight that the Indian will jump up on the buffalo,” Gillingham said. But the sheriff also acknowledges that his department has had a running feud with Reed since her 1988 decision to take operation of the county jails away from the Sheriff’s Department in a cost-cutting move.

Just as she can be tough and personable at the same time, Reed also is able to enjoy success without being pretentious.

She fits the image of a successful business executive--being one of the first women to join the local Rotary--but then drags her co-workers to what she admits are “Grade C Mexican restaurants” for lunch at least three days a week.

She is driven in her career, but also has a passion for family and sport. With her knack for success, she started playing golf only two years ago and already has had a hole in one.

(The golf coup is well-known in county lore here, though one co-worker has been known to quip: “She only got a hole in one because the clown’s mouth was open.”)

In Los Angeles, Reed will have to deal with a different government structure, with different lines of authority than exist in Santa Clara County. In Los Angeles County, all department heads technically answer to the supervisors, not the chief administrative officer, which is the case in Santa Clara.

However, historically, Los Angeles supervisors have abdicated much of their authority to the chief administrative officer. That may well continue during Reed’s tenure; she enjoys strong backing from three supervisors and all five voted last week to hire her.

“She’ll bring a different way of doing things to Los Angeles,” said Jane Decker, director of strategic planning for Santa Clara County and a longtime friend of Reed. “She will not assume she doesn’t have power.”

Decker said that when Reed joined Santa Clara County government, after serving as deputy city manager in San Jose, she made some radical changes.

“When she came in here it was very decentralized,” Decker said. “Sally centralized it. She made it a team.”

In Los Angeles, Decker said, the Board of Supervisors should also give her the power and authority to rebuild the organization her way. “If they don’t, it could be a real problem,” Decker said.

Reed said she realizes that she works for the board, but will stick to her principles. “I will not win all the time, but I will take the same position,” she said.

In Santa Clara, Reed, who is a Republican, served a Democrat-dominated board--much as she will in Los Angeles.

“They should feel relieved that she was able to work with us,” Santa Clara County Supervisor Mike Honda said of his Los Angeles counterparts. “She knows how to work with each one of us, with our different personalities and styles.”

When starting in Los Angeles, Reed said she will pursue three parallel tracks.

“I’ll get going on the budget right as I walk in the door,” said Reed. “They are still overspending. I’ll have to put a lot of fingers in the dike.”

Among the likely victims of Reed’s sharp budget ax will be the county’s many perks for senior officials.

“I’m a big believer in symbols,” said Reed. And symbols of government waste are not tolerated.

In a series of meetings with rank-and-file employees this year in Santa Clara, Reed said she kept hearing discord about a management automobile expense allowance.

“It was a symbol,” said Reed. “It had to go. It was not enough money to make a difference in the budget. But it had to go.”

The second track will be to “spend time with the board to find out what their key priorities are,” she said.

And the third avenue is to “meet with the key people and let them know what my style is. . . . I like to avoid surprises and build relationships on trust.”

The biggest change for Reed in coming to Los Angeles will be the sheer size of the job: Santa Clara’s budget is fourth-largest in California, while Los Angeles’ is larger than 42 states.

But Reed remains confident about the job before her.

“The numbers, in and of themselves, are not a problem,” she said. “It’s not a different analytical process. But can you get a hold of the people you need? I need to know the department heads and their assistants” and myriad other staffers, she said. “That may not be possible” in an organization like Los Angeles’, where more than 2,000 may be laid off.

When Santa Clara County faced layoffs last year, Reed said she was able to find an alternative job with the county for every affected employee. “That was personal, one-on-one and there were hundreds of them,” Reed said. “But can we do that with thousands? I don’t know.”

Profile: Sally R. Reed * Born: Nov. 25, 1942

* Residence: Saratoga, Calif.

* Education: University of Missouri, bachelor’s degreee in economics/law

* Career highlights: Named last week to be the chief administrative officer of Los Angeles County, effective Oct. 18. Currently, county executive of Santa Clara County, overseeing 15,000 workers and a $1.2-billion budget. Previously was deputy city manager of San Jose and an economist with the Commerce Department in Washington.

* Interests: Golf, Mexican restaurants, family activities.

* Family: Married with two children

* Quote: “I place a premium on honesty and integrity in organizations. I believe integrity is broader than the absence of corruption, and encompasses fairness and open honest communication with the public and the press.”