It may be mid-August before Orange County Supervisors are all able to get back together.
And the county’s Chief Executive Officer, Frank Kim, is scheduled to leave July 11.
That means the County of Orange is facing a leadership vacuum not seen since the 1994 bankruptcy.
It’s a sprawling public sector with about 20,000 employees and a $9.5 billion budget – covering the most critical countywide human and social services, along with overseeing spending on key areas like land use, public works, law enforcement and emergency response.
Orange County Supervisors had seven months to find Kim’s replacement.
But so far, the effort to find a professional replacement through an ad hoc committee of supervisors has seemingly broken down.
There’s reports that outgoing Supervisor Andrew Do, mired in controversy, partnered with the Orange County Employees Association to push an alternative candidate currently managing a comparatively small special district budget in Orange County.
[Read: Santana: Finding Orange County’s Next CEO Just Got Complicated]
No one is officially commenting about what’s going on in a string of closed session meetings – even though the CEO hiring effort has been plagued with leaks.
This week, county supervisors secretly met again behind closed doors on the issue but weren’t able to find consensus on any candidate – coming out of a four-hour closed session with no announcements.
Meaning, no CEO.
According to the official schedule of public meetings for the County of Orange, there’s only one meeting in July and the next public meeting after that is Aug. 13.
A Failure to Lead
In many ways, the leadership vacuum marks the ultimate failure of the post-bankruptcy governance era.
After the county government went bankrupt in 1994 over a lack of questioning and oversight, the veneer of those mechanisms were seemingly put in place.
Wall Street investors bailing out the county demanded lots of financial oversight panels, which were later followed by the establishment of independent oversight for the Sheriff’s Department – even management performance auditors.
But over the course of the next few decades, the public sector executive ranks at the County of Orange also became much more politicized, with county supervisors’ political aides increasingly moving into the management ranks.
The fact that there is no credible executive out of that pack that can step up now with the full faith of the county board of supervisors marks the collective failure of the county’s politicians and executives to craft what local residents deserve.
World class.
OC residents have every reason to expect that their county government executives are the best in the nation.
County supervisors and residents had a competent CEO in Frank Kim – the county’s former budget director – and enjoyed his services for nearly a decade.
Kim has served his time.
Yet county supervisors failed him, by failing to surround him with an environment where he could mentor a successor.
That’s a loss for us all.
Where Do We Go From Here?
In the meantime – my call is that Chief Financial Officer Michelle Aguirre gets a polite knock on the door with a request from county supervisors to take over on an interim basis.
She reportedly turned down the job.
Yet like Kim before her, Aguirre knows the budget, which means she knows the county.
In many cases like this, it’s often the chief finance person – or the chief of police – that takes the reins in the midst of chaos.
They’ve had a chance to look over all the other internal candidates.
They passed.
There is no consensus candidate.
Again, a stark statement about the leadership of county supervisors and the quality of the county’s management ranks over the past two decades.
Can They Go Public?
As odd as it sounds, I keep wondering what an open process to find a CEO might look like?
Would you hold hearings and ask for open auditions of candidates?
Orange County’s Board of Education did that recently with an opening for county school superintendent – the first new official in that seat in a decade.
[Read: Who Will Be Orange County’s Next Superintendent of School?]
Would it be that bad?
What do you have to lose – especially given the current situation?
If they can convince Aguirre to take over as acting CEO, then county supervisors get to spend their summer vacations envisioning a better process for finding the next chief executive.
Perhaps even a bold vision for the county.
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