COMMENTARY ON O.C. BANKRUPTCY : Public Expects--and Deserves--Leadership From Supervisors : The board shouldn’t rely on a new CEO or the political in-crowd to solve the crisis. It must take responsibility.

The residents are restless, and they have every right to be. The supervisors allowed the county to be overrun by bondholders, bankruptcy lawyers and creditors. That no one was minding the store is now obvious; the question is whether the negligent Board of Supervisors can solve a problem of their own making. To do so effectively will require the board to change some old and bad habits.

We are now two months from ground zero. Ample time has elapsed for damage assessment. The principal loss and immediate budgetary shortfalls have been announced, yet a comprehensive strategy to resolve either is nonexistent. The board fails to appreciate the desire of the public to have an overall plan presented by the board that addresses all aspects of this financial crisis. The public is anxious for leadership, not free-lancing or delegation.

The board’s own culture hinders it from leading the county out of this quagmire. For too long the board has acted not as a board, but as five individuals who ran their respective districts as private preserves. Proposed projects within a supervisor’s district were subject only to the prerogatives of the ruling supervisor.

This practice has neither served this county well nor prepared it to deal with the crisis we now face.

The enormity of the crisis and the shortfall of talent resulted in several outside experts coming to the rescue. In hiring Thomas W.Hayes, Thomas E. Daxon and Arthur Andersen & Co., the board moved expeditiously to reorganize and audit the Orange County investment pool. Having witnessed effective management, maybe for the first time, the board now believes that its salvation rests in bringing in a single, more powerful expert. The search is on for a CEO who is able to leap tall deficits in a single bound, and is faster than a disgruntled union. This is the Superman Syndrome.

While Sanford Sigoloff or any other individual may greatly assist the resolution of this crisis, it is ludicrous to believe that one person can solve this problem alone. If one Superman can make Orange County financially sound again, why can’t we hire one more to eliminate crime and another to educate our children?

This also raises the question of what five supervisors and the 18,000 county employees do to earn their paychecks. History shows that communities successfully overcome crisis by working together--bringing all the resources of the community together in a common venture.

However, such an approach is contrary to the county board’s practice. If you watch the supervisors, you get the impression that they believe there are only a handful of people in all of Orange County who can be trusted to be included in the government decision-making process. Is this trust based on competency or, more likely, the assurance of a desired result?

Supervisor Marian Bergeson is to be commended for establishing a management audit of county government. But by choosing Bruce Nestande, the private lobbyist for George Argyros, to be chairman of the task force, the board reinforces the anxious public’s suspicion that the insider game continues despite the growing crisis.

It is the political and business elites who have helped lead us down this disastrous road. This crisis is too large and the consequences to the public too serious for the board to continue to rely exclusively on the political in-crowd.

Recent board actions indicate an intention to have others outline the hard choices and still others, e.g. a CEO, carry out the unpopular alternatives. Given the possible political fallout, it is not surprising that the board is putting political expediency above public responsibility.

An opportunity exists for the supervisors to build a bridge to the community and solve an important county issue. Restructuring of county government is the only permanent value that can come from this crisis.

But the restructuring process will be valuable and credible only if the public is allowed to participate. It is not enough for those on the inside to use this crisis to fix their private annoyances with county government.

There are no painless alternatives to honestly and fully resolving this crisis; to pretend otherwise is offensive to the public’s intelligence. While the Orange County Business Council has served the county well in laying a credible proposal on the table, it is the board’s duty to step forward with a plan to address each aspect of the financial shortfall.

Any realistic plan will contain a mix of choices that will incense some segments of the residents and certain constituencies. This is the unavoidable result and having to solve an avoidable problem.

The board will suffer worse consequences by not responsibly confronting this crisis than from the initial lapse of oversight. Efforts at recall may help work off anger, but do little to solve essential county problems. I, like more county residents, support the board in its efforts to effectively resolve this fiasco. The board must move quickly to create and announce its plan. Failure to do so would not so much generate a recall, but something worse--ridicule.