EDITORIAL : TROUBLE IN VENTURA; COUNTY OFFICIALS OUGHT TO TAKE THE COMPLAINTS BY SHORT-LIVED CHIEF ADMINISTRATOR TO HEART AND FIX WHAT'S WRONG.THE blistering assessment of Ventura County government in Chief Administrative Officer A chief administrative officer (CAO) is responsible for administrative management of private, public or governmental corporations. The CAO is one of the highest ranking members of an organization, managing daily operations and usually reporting directly to the chief executive David L. Baker's resignation letter exposed a side of the county that few are privy to, even though glimpses of the awful management culture were exposed in the recent mental health care fiasco. Baker, the highly respected top administrator of San Joaquin San Joaquin (săn wäkēn`), river, c.320 mi (510 km) long, rising in the Sierra Nevada, E Calif., and flowing W then N through the S Central Valley to form a large delta with the Sacramento River near Suisun Bay, an arm of San Francisco Bay. County, learned five days into his Ventura County job that he would get little help, if any, from entrenched en·trench also in·trench v. en·trenched, en·trench·ing, en·trench·es v.tr. 1. To provide with a trench, especially for the purpose of fortifying or defending. 2. county employees and bull-headed county supervisors to help fix the extraordinarily complex problems he inherited. Baker's six-page letter listed 23 items - from management to capital construction to labor to mental health care - that needed immediate and fundamental overhauls. ``Problems are overwhelming and there is near financial chaos,'' he warned in his letter to the Board of Supervisors. This makes Ventura County sound a lot like the Los Angeles school The Los Angeles School of Urbanism is an academic movement emerged during the mid-1980s, loosely based at the University of Southern California and UCLA, that poses a challenge to the dominant Chicago School of Urbanism. system, where administrators don't know Don't know (DK, DKed) "Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. where the money is and there are no controls on how money is spent. At the very least, Baker's observations ought to be looked into by an outside consultant or blue ribbon blue ribbon denotes highest honor. [Western Folklore: Brewer Dictionary, 127] See : Prize panel. At the utmost, immediate action must be taken on several fronts to prevent the county from falling further into ruin. Dismissing the missive out of hand - as at least one supervisor has - would only reinforce Baker's assessment that the old guard in county government and the Board of Supervisors prefer to operate ``business as usual'' instead of taking the drastic steps that are necessary. Community leaders and elected officials must take the lead and represent the people's interests and clean up this mess. Supervisor Judy Mikels took the bait and attacked Baker for throwing up his hands, but has thus far failed to propose any credible solutions. It seems that only Supervisor Frank Schillo has been making progressive proposals and bucking the majority in an attempt to instill in·still v. To pour in drop by drop. in  stil·la tion n. reforms.
The people of Ventura County deserve a lot better than they appear to be getting. The supervisors need to get the job done and bring the government under control. Otherwise, the voters will surely remember how they were let down come election day. |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion