Popejoy: Tax OK Likelier if 3 Leave Board

Orange County Chief Executive Officer William J. Popejoy said Wednesday that chances for voter approval of a half-cent sales tax would be greatly enhanced if three of his bosses--Supervisors Roger R. Stanton, William G. Steiner and Gaddi H. Vasquez--announced they were not seeking reelection.

In an interview with The Times, Popejoy said he was not calling for them to make such an announcement.

But he said it was clear to him that the sales tax initiative he views as critical to the county’s recovery from bankruptcy would stand a better chance of winning voter approval in a special election set for June 27 if they did.

The three supervisors Popejoy named are “holdovers” from the immediate previous board. In that capacity, they were responsible for overseeing the activities of former Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert L. Citron, who borrowed as much as $14 billion to invest in risky securities that eventually plunged the county into bankruptcy.

Popejoy, a former American Savings & Loan chairman who was hired by the supervisors to engineer the county’s recovery from bankruptcy, said he was basing his view on comments he has heard in talking to voters who are furious with the county supervisors, and on his reading of a poll on voter attitudes in Tuesday’s Times.

That poll showed that an overwhelming percentage of Orange County voters, many of whom blame the supervisors and other elected officials for the bankruptcy, are presently opposed to the sales tax initiative, which will appear on the special June election ballot as Measure R.

“I do think the sales tax would have a greater chance of going through if the supervisors who were involved at that time said, ‘We don’t plan to run for reelection,’ ” Popejoy said. “It isn’t for me to suggest that, but people have been making those requests.”

Popejoy also said that the present county government structure, with an elected five-member Board of Supervisors at the top, has become a “dinosaur organization” that he thinks should be abolished and replaced with a nine-member board that sets policy and leaves management of the county to an appointed chief executive.

Steiner and Vasquez reacted to Popejoy’s comments Wednesday with vows to run again. Stanton did not return calls for comment.

“I’m in for the duration to help the county out of bankruptcy,” said Steiner, a 1993 gubernatorial appointee who won his first election to a full four-year term in 1994. He added that the sales tax initiative is in big trouble whether he and the other “holdover” supervisors seek to remain in office or not.

“Speculation about the effects or non-effects on an election is just speculative,” said Vasquez, the board’s current chairman. “The first and foremost focus that I have had during this entire process is trying to deal with this financial crisis. That will continue to be my focus and commitment.”

Supervisors Marian Bergeson and Jim Silva were not installed as members of the Orange County Board of Supervisors until January of this year, one month after the county declared bankruptcy.

In making his rounds of speaking engagements about the needed sales tax increase before various community groups, Popejoy said he hears repeatedly that voters will support the tax only under one of two conditions: if the county stops paying Citron’s pension--a move that county attorneys have advised would be illegal--or if the supervisors resign.

“Well, the voters are the ones who put them there, and they are the ones who can vote them out,” Popejoy said.

Business leaders, state politicians and local citizen-activists have already called for the three supervisors’ ouster. Political consultants too have said that Stanton, Steiner and Vasquez have grim political futures.

In February, leaders of the influential Orange County Business Council privately pressured the same three supervisors to announce that they would step down at the end of their current terms, in part because they were refusing at that time even to consider any tax increase.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) has repeatedly said the county should receive no help from Sacramento until Steiner, Stanton and Vasquez step down. Other lawmakers, including several on the special state Senate panel investigating the Orange County debacle, have questioned whether the county could ever recover from bankruptcy as long as they remain in office.

A co-chair of that committee is proposing legislation that would strip the supervisors of their authority in financial matters, which would be turned over to trustees named by the state.

Vasquez has already drawn an election opponent, Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange). Stanton is the subject of an ongoing recall effort.

In Wednesday’s interview, Popejoy had praise for the supervisors’ leadership over the past two months, saying they had made tough decisions on budget cuts, voted to place the sales tax increase on the ballot and given him great authority to manage the county through the bankruptcy.

“They’ve acted courageously on issues that were unpopular,” he said. “I have a high degree of respect for some of the positions they’ve taken since I’ve been here. On the tax issue, they took a lot of heat and still are.”

But after two months on the job, Popejoy said he has concluded that the current county government structure, which vests virtually all of the decision-making authority in a full-time, five-member Board of Supervisors, should be scrapped in favor of a part-time, nine-member board that would function much like a corporate board of directors.

“The directors of ATT and Bank of America are not full time and those corporations are far bigger than the county,” Popejoy said, adding that board is “an organization that doesn’t work. It’s like a company that is run by five CEOs.”

The current structure, he said, encourages board members to behave like “career politicians,” whose every decision can be based on how it will affect their reelection chances.

“It becomes their livelihood, their career,” he said. “You want some independence here. You want people who are saying, ‘If I don’t have this job, it’s no big deal.’ You want to get away from the career politician. You want someone who still has a life and has a business and you should pay them, but not a lot of pay--$30,000 to $40,000--like you’d pay a director of a major corporation.”

Although he believes the blame for the county’s bankruptcy falls mostly on Citron, he said some supervisors--whom he declined to name--didn’t have a clue about the intricacies of the county’s investment portfolio.

“I don’t believe those supervisors sat up on the fifth floor and knew that Mr. Citron was following a program that could cause a $2-billion loss,” he said.

“But I do believe that there were some people on the fifth floor who didn’t understand enough about it and were out of their element.”

Part of the problem, he said, stems from the county having a full-time board that was so busy micro-managing tiny issues that it didn’t have time to set overall policy. The board has become a “dinosaur organization which lends itself to a lack of responsibility,” he said.

“The more people you have responsible for the same tasks, the fewer people you have responsible, because no one person is responsible.”

Popejoy also believes that the county auditor should report directly to the Board of Supervisors and that the treasurer should be appointed.

“All you need to become treasurer in this county is to get more votes than the person you’re running against,” he said. “You don’t need to know a damn thing about money management. It’s like saying, ‘Let’s vote for someone to be brain surgeon and by the way, whoever gets the most votes has to go in and do the surgery after the election.’ ”

Popejoy said he agrees in principle with a proposal offered last week by Supervisor Bergeson to replace supervisors with an advisory board and a far more powerful county administrator. Though Bergeson had suggested electing the administrator and appointing the advisory board, Popejoy said he would prefer an appointed administrator with appropriate expertise, and an elected board to ensure accountability to the public.

Bergeson’s plan--which would require amending the state Constitution--would transfer many county functions to the state and some others to the cities. Her staff has estimated that the plan could save more than $140 million a year.

Bergeson, who is scheduled to meet with Popejoy today to discuss ideas for restructuring county government, supported the CEO’s proposal wholeheartedly.

“This is exactly the point that I’m trying to make. The county structure is simply not reflective of the needs of service delivery for the 1990s era,” Bergeson said.

California’s counties were designed mainly to make land-use decisions. But as more and more of their territory is incorporated into cities, boards of supervisors were left with fewer such decisions. Now, the main role of supervisors is to administer programs mandated by the state and federal governments.

“We don’t do the legislating. We have to respond or react to what the state does. And that’s why you need a manager to oversee those programs, rather than board members who want to legislate instead of manage,” Bergeson said.

“We’ve found we spend more time fighting with the cities rather than looking at what are the needs of our clients, how do we meet the needs of our community.”

Bergeson declined to comment on Popejoy’s suggestion that her colleagues leave after their current terms.

Steiner said he has served part time on a city council and school board as a “citizen-politician,” and neither job involved “the magnitude of issues you have in county government that requires full-time attention.”

As for patterning the Board of Supervisors after a corporate board of directors, Steiner said, “corporate America is littered with powerful CEOs who led their companies to disaster with little oversight by a part-time board of directors.”

Vasquez said he is open to all ideas about restructuring county government but wants the citizen-committees that have been appointed to study the issue to have a chance to do their work before any proposal gains momentum.

“I applaud any time that there’s a suggestion for a new way or a better way to govern. I think, however, that you need to be cautious,” Vasquez said. “This is a process and a system where representation is important. What I would not want to see is a situation where you have people in an administrative or executive position that are not accountable.

“The structural reorganization that I’d like to see us focus on right now ought to be the financial restructuring.”