BAKER DID THE COUNTY A FAVOR - IF ANYONE'S LISTENING.

Byline: James Bemis Commentary

It's said that Diogenes, the fourth-century Greek philosopher, traveled the world in search of an honest man. Had he run into David Baker, he could have saved a lot of shoe leather.

Baker served less than a week as Ventura County's chief administrative officer before submitting his resignation. Before leaving, however, he provided a frank assessment of the county's management and finances. And his report ain't pretty.

In a bombshell resignation letter, Baker leveled devastating charges against the county, claiming it is ``near financial chaos'' and having trouble making payroll.

He also says that county departments run rampant because of a weak CAO staff and the Board of Supervisors' complicity, and change will be difficult because county leadership wants ``business as usual.''

Brutal stuff, especially coming from a 30-year government veteran. But say one thing for Baker: at least he's truthful.

The onset of this crisis, though, was obvious to anyone with eyes to see it. Over the years, taxpayers have borne witness to a series of management debacles: bungling in the Sheriff's Department crime lab, an embarrassing failure to merge the Behavioral Health and Public Social Services departments, then accusations by federal auditors of fraudulent Medi-Cal billing practices.

For years, county elected officials have been in deep denial about the extent of the organizational dysfunction, probably because, as Supervisor Frank Schillo said, ``the problem is the Board of Supervisors'' itself.

Here is a county that has agreed to pay more than $15 million to settle allegations of fraudulent Medi-Cal billing. Nevertheless, this year's budget calls for a 10 percent increase in salaries and benefits and the hiring of 330 - that's right, 330 - new employees, without identifying revenue to pay for them.

If someone in a private-sector business tried this, its owners would quickly find themselves bankrupt - or in jail.

Another clue came when supervisors told staff to take the unprecedented step of sniffing around city treasuries for loot to pay the cost of housing the mentally ill. ``We don't have any specific solutions but there are pots of money all over the place,'' Supervisor John Flynn recently told county managers. ``We have the staff to find it, we have the know-how to find it. Now all we have to do is go out there and find it.''

Much of this crisis is owing to our modern form of governance itself. Not satisfied with performing the specific, limited functions that are the proper role of the State - services such as protecting life and property, picking up the trash, repairing streets - today's bureaucrats believe it's their job to save the world, bring meaning to people's lives and protect us from everything that's harmful, dangerous, or fattening.

This model of government as parent, provider and priest poses significant problems, though: There's no principled place for the government's meddling to stop. It terminates in only one of two places: bankruptcy, if we're lucky, or tyranny if we're not.

Like unsuspecting groupers, county supervisors swallowed the notion of the limitless state - hook, line and sinker. They even took on such tasks as telling us when to weed our yards and where we can smoke. Such overextending reached its pinnacle last month when the board voted to support imposing a ``living-wage'' requirement on county contractors, presuming that five supervisors know better than the market what wages should be.

Meanwhile, we now discover, the board's ability to pay its own employees a living wage is severely threatened, as the county itself is existing paycheck-to-paycheck because of the supervisors' free-spending ways.

Paraphrasing a medical adage, perhaps it's time to tell board members, ``Politician, heal thyself!''

In sending shock waves throughout Ventura County, David Baker has done us all a favor. As in the fairy tale, ``The Emperor's New Clothes,'' it took someone uncorrupted by local sophisticates and swindlers to see the naked truth, and then speak it.

Give Mr. Baker credit, too, for figuring out in one week what others needed years to discover: The county's emperors have no clothes.