New County Chief Signals Changes

As he looked forward to the most important assignment of his long career in government, David E. Janssen signaled Wednesday that he believes financially troubled Los Angeles County must do things differently.

“Government needs to provide the most effective service in the least expensive way it can,” Janssen said in his first extensive interview since he was named Tuesday as Los Angeles County’s chief administrative officer. “It can be with county employees or not with county employees.”

Janssen said he believes the county’s 81,000 workers need to compete with private companies to serve the public. “All things being equal, government ought to be able to provide services cheaper,” he said, because it is not in business to make a profit.

But competition with outside contractors can make government more efficient, he said.

As he begins to examine the way Los Angeles County spends its $12.2-billion budget, Janssen said he will ask a basic question: What is the most effective way to deliver the service? It could be county employees or through privatization or use of community-based organizations, he said, adding, “I don’t go in with a bias.”

Janssen said he intends to work with the county’s powerful employee unions as part of his approach to involving all groups with a stake in county decisions.

As with his immediate predecessor, Sally Reed, the presence of this lanky, low-key bureaucrat is bound to shake up the clubby business-as-usual atmosphere that has long dominated the nation’s largest county government.

“Nothing is going to happen overnight,” Janssen said in his office overlooking the scenic La Jolla coastline where he has been working as a consultant for the Price Family Foundation. But he promised that over time he will bring together competing interests in search of solutions to the vexing problem of providing vital services to millions of people in an era of shrinking resources.

“Everybody has a role,” he said, “and needs to be at the table.”

Janssen brings with him from the top administrative job in San Diego County a fiscally conservative manner and willingness to try new approaches.

After watching Los Angeles County struggle with its fiscal difficulties from his vantage point in San Diego, Janssen understands what will confront him when he assumes the $180,134-a-year job next week.

He knows that Los Angeles County has suffered through its worst fiscal crisis ever, that its huge health system faces immense demands, that its responsibility to provide welfare for the needy is large and likely to grow, and that its criminal justice system is stressed to the breaking point and badly needs more jail space.

“Los Angeles is bigger than San Diego, but the problems are no different,” Janssen said. “Counties in California are and have been for some period of time in enormous difficulty. Any time you have an organization that can’t control the demand for its services and cannot control its revenues, it is going to have serious problems.”

Janssen is cautious, almost circumspect about how he will approach these problems. He is clearly deferential to his powerful bosses--the Board of Supervisors. “The board’s job is extraordinarily difficult,” he said. “These five people have an awesome responsibility.”

After nearly 24 years in government, including a tour of duty in the administration of former Gov. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr. and his recent falling-out with San Diego County supervisors that led to his resigning as chief administrator there, Janssen has learned not to get too far in front of his bosses.

“Our job is to try and provide as objectively as possible information so that the board can make decisions. It is not to box them in or push them against the wall,” he said. “The bureaucracy should not be setting policy.”

That role belongs to the elected supervisors, he said.

“The board has to continue to take serious steps to deal with the fiscal crisis,” he said.

Although San Diego County also struggled through five years of recession, its credit rating did not suffer the steep decline that affected Los Angeles County. Janssen acknowledged the importance of financial discipline and the need to satisfy Wall Street bond rating agencies.

Like Reed, he said, he does not believe in borrowing to pay for operating expenses, and believes one-time revenues should be used for one-time purposes. To understand his approach to pay raises, all one has to do is look at his record in San Diego County.

Janssen said he held the line against pay increases in recent years and believes government must be careful in granting them because they build in future costs. “You can’t ignore the cost of salaries,” he said. “They are a major component of the budget. They have to be on the [negotiating] table.”

When it comes to health care, Janssen will face a vastly different world. San Diego County does not operate a public hospital, but contracts with UC San Diego for those services. He will inherit a $2.3-billion-a-year health system with six hospitals, more than two dozen clinics and 23,000 employees.

The cost of providing health care to the poor and those lacking health insurance threatened to drive Los Angeles County to the edge of bankruptcy last fall, until President Clinton announced a federal bailout tied to restructuring the health system.