3 ‘Holdover’ Officials Hurt O.C. Tax Hike’s Chances, CEO Says : Bankruptcy: Levy might win passage if supervisors who oversaw disastrous investment strategy decided not to seek reelection, Popejoy says.

SANTA ANA —  Orange County chief executive 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 that 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 June 27 election if they did.

The three supervisors Popejoy named are “holdovers” from the previous board. In that capacity, they were responsible for overseeing the activities of former Treasurer Robert L. Citron, who borrowed as much as $20 billion to invest in risky securities that plunged the county into bankruptcy.

Popejoy, the 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 from voters who are furious at the 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 opposed to the sales tax initiative, which will appear on the June 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, had become a “dinosaur organization” that 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 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 have plans 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.”

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

Popejoy said he hears repeatedly during his speaking engagements before community groups that voters would support the tax only under one of two conditions: If the county stopped paying the pension of former treasurer Citron--a move that county attorneys have advised would be illegal--or if the supervisors resigned.

“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 called for the trio’s ouster. Political consultants, too, previously 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 terms, in part because they were refusing at the time to even consider a 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 probing the Orange County debacle, have questioned whether the county could recover from bankruptcy as long as the three 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 drawn an 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 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 AT&T; and Bank of America are not full time and those corporations are far bigger than the county,” Popejoy said, adding that the 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.”