County Administrator Uses Wit, Wisdom to Keep Peace : Government: Over the past 10 years, Richard Wittenberg has survived powerful bosses and has built a reputation as a top manager in a tough field.

When Richard Wittenberg took over as Ventura County’s chief administrative officer in 1979, his appointment represented a first that was never publicly discussed nor acknowledged.

But soon after he assumed the position, one of his bosses took him aside to ask:

“Well, now that we have the first Jewish CAO in California is there going to be a change around here?”

“I said, ‘Yes, every Tuesday we’re going to have the Torah brought down to the hearing room for meetings,’ ” Wittenberg recalls. “He said, ‘What’s a Torah?’ I said, ‘We’ve got a long way to go.’ ”

In that exchange, Wittenberg defused a potentially awkward moment with the quick wit and non-confrontational manner that has marked his style for more than a decade as the most powerful non-elected officeholder in Ventura County.

At the time he was hired in 1979, the board’s turbulent meetings were known as “The Gong Show.” And those stormy sessions only reflected the wars being waged behind the scenes at the county’s Government Center.

Supervisors would shout each other down at Tuesday hearings, while directors of some county departments refused to speak to each other at all.

“The place was in chaos. All kinds of Byzantine games were going on,” recalls James R. Dougherty, whose first important action as a new supervisor was to demand the resignation of the county’s chief administrative officer, Monte Lish.

Lish, a forceful administrator who, supervisors said, ignored their wishes and overlooked departmental feuds, was replaced by the affable, 38-year-old Wittenberg, a former UCLA valedictorian who had trained as a lawyer, worked as a county lobbyist in Sacramento and served as a top Lish aide.

“Richard stepped into that situation and straightened it out,” said Dougherty, who is still on the board. “He came across in a nonthreatening way which got all those people back together. They didn’t love each other, but they were talking. And that, more than anything else, shows Richard’s greatest talent. He is able to set aside his own ego and solve the problem.”

Since those first months, Wittenberg has established himself as a rare commodity among local government administrators: a manager who has not only survived a succession of strong bosses--any three of whom could fire him--but who also has built a statewide reputation as a top practitioner of his difficult business.

At 50, his resume bulges with accomplishments and honors. Peers generally consider him among the top five county administrators in the state. And he regularly represents counties collectively before the Legislature.

Early concerns that Wittenberg was long on contacts and personality but short on substance have generally abated, though one county department head still considers him “kind of a figurehead who is surrounded by excellent people, but whose primary skill is schmoozing.”

County Auditor-Controller Norman R. Hawkes, who originally thought Wittenberg was not qualified to be a chief administrator, now says he has grown into the job.

“Richard is almost ideal for that position,” Hawkes said. “If he were super-authoritative, he wouldn’t live long with the board. And if he were a weak sister, he wouldn’t survive either.”

Wittenberg has placed his own understated stamp on Ventura County government.

As the board’s principal adviser, he still spreads the message of compromise that first won over Dougherty a decade ago. Supervisors sometimes bitterly disagree with each other, even with Wittenberg at their elbows, but usually not in public.

“Confrontations don’t solve problems,” Wittenberg said in an interview in his small county office. “I did have a temper as a child. But I found it didn’t accomplish much.”

Wittenberg’s job is to keep the supervisors happy, out of trouble and away from each other’s throats. At any board meeting, chances are that at least one will be angry about something, he says.

Before they flare or after they do, “I try to appeal to the adult in them, to their better selves. I try to get them to understand that there was a reason for what someone else said or did.”

Supervisor John K. Flynn, whose fiery exchanges with board member Madge L. Schaefer have spiced several meetings, said he appreciates Wittenberg, the peacekeeper.

“Just having Richard around is a calming influence,” said Flynn, a board member of 14 years. “He’ll say, ‘Take it easy. Watch what you say.’ ”

Supervisor Maggie Erickson remembers a situation a few years ago when “Jim Dougherty and I got into it. Richard did everything but bodily move us out of the boardroom so the reporters wouldn’t hear us. In that way, he kind of protects us.”

Schaefer said she values that trait: “You know, we could all go out and commit ax murders and Richard would defend us to the hilt.”

Wittenberg’s job calls for him to fill roles far beyond mediation and public relations.

As coordinator of all county operations and programs, he hires department heads and makes sure they implement the supervisors’ policies. He writes the county budget, which the supervisors usually adopt nearly as presented. He negotiates with cities and the state.

And he is credited with providing a strong plan to maintain public services during a decade of funding cuts that have led other counties to the brink of bankruptcy.

Wittenberg also is often the human face of Ventura County government within the community, spending weeknights at meetings or speaking to organizations.

What the community sees is a man who knows how to work a crowd. He remembers every name, asks about every wife and family. He will chat with gadflies as well as with movers and shakers. Before board meetings, when few are around, he will amble into the audience to shake hands and introduce one person to another.

“I’ve always had the impression that he feels comfortable with me,” said former state senator and now U.S. Rep. Robert Lagomarsino (R-Ventura), who has known Wittenberg since they worked in Sacramento in the early 1970s. “He was very popular up there. . . . He cares about people and shows his interest.”

Schaefer declared: “I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like Richard Wittenberg. If he ran for office, he’d be elected unanimously.”

Yet, Wittenberg is among the most private public people in Ventura County.

He has so subordinated his own personal opinions to the policies of the Board of Supervisors that some people who have known him for years have no idea whether he is a Democrat or a Republican, liberal or conservative.

“I rarely use the word I in my writings,” Wittenberg said.

Lagomarsino, though a longtime Wittenberg booster, could only guess at his friend’s political affiliation.

“I don’t know how he votes, but I suspect I do,” Lagomarsino said.

Wittenberg, in fact, is a fiscally conservative Democrat who was once very poor and who has demonstrated his concern for the needy through work for the United Way and other charities.

“It sounds Pollyannish, but I believe in that stuff,” he said.

He hosted two Soviet Jewish families as part of a resettlement program that his wife, Joyce, created in 1978 through Temple Beth Torah in Ventura, where she is a former congregation president.

Wittenberg was a founding member of a local chapter of the National Urban League, which promotes racial equality and employment parity. Demonstrations of religious or racial bias, Wittenberg says, may be the surest way to make him angry. And he has found anti-Semitism disturbingly close to the surface.

At 17, an employer denied him a job because of a strict rule against hiring Jews, and his religion has crept into other discussions about employment, both his and others’, Wittenberg said.

In 1984, Public Defender Kenneth Clayman was hired by Ventura County. Wittenberg recalled:

“One of our department heads, who is no longer with us, said, ‘Did it help him that he was Jewish?’ I said, ‘He got an extra 10 points.’ ”

Despite an annual salary of $118,000, Wittenberg remains very much the son of a Bronx baker who died when Wittenberg was 9 and of a mother who moved her three young children to West Los Angeles with $200 in her pocket nearly four decades ago.

Wittenberg has worked since he was 10, he said. By the time he graduated from the UCLA School of Law in 1965 he said he had held perhaps 50 jobs, including positions as a truck loader and as a student union manager.

“In my mind, I’m still poor,” he said during an interview, stroking his $5 department store tie. He is still motivated by the desire “to feed my family. I have a very difficult time spending money. My trip to Hawaii drove me crazy.”

Supervisors say they did not know Wittenberg was sensitive about financial security when they gave him a four-year, top-dollar contract in 1986, then renewed it for another four years last winter. Traditionally, city and county chief executives have had no contracts, serving only as long as they please the elected officials who hired them.

That first contract came about a year after Wittenberg had been a top contender for chief executive in Los Angeles County, the nation’s largest county.

Ed Edelman, chairman of the Los Angeles board, said he thought Wittenberg was the most qualified candidate, and he was Edelman’s choice. But members of the board’s conservative, Republican majority chose a dark horse from their own party instead.

By 1986, Wittenberg was president-elect of the statewide county chief executives association, and recruiters from other jurisdictions were seeking him out, Supervisor Susan K. Lacey recalled.

“San Diego called and just plain said he was the one they wanted,” Lacey said. “He didn’t apply. And it was never a question of him saying, ‘I need a contract to stay.’ But there was a recognition that we did not want to lose him.”

Nor does Wittenberg seem very interested in going somewhere else. He would not be disappointed if he stayed at the county for the rest of his career, as long as he continues to be effective.

His first priority, Wittenberg said, is his family.

He met wife Joyce, a former model who is now a family counselor, at UCLA and they married 28 years ago. They have raised three children: David, 23, a graduate student in clinical psychology; Kevin, 20, a senior at UCLA; and Laura, 16, a senior at Buena High School in Ventura.

“There are many SOBs with Ph.D.s,” he said, “so our goal has been to raise good kids.”

While Wittenberg’s days are often long, his work ends with the setting sun on Friday to observe the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath.

“My perfect weekend is not to see anybody except my family,” the chief administrator said.

Wittenberg, who hit .550 as a high school right fielder and who wrestled at UCLA, shares sports with his children. He relaxes with rented movies and through an occasional game of golf. State Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara), who narrowly lost a bid to unseat Lagomarsino in 1988, is a member of his steady foursome.

His most nagging conflict, Wittenberg said, may be his need to balance family concerns with professional responsibilities. Sometimes he has not been successful, especially when he was commuting twice a week to Sacramento as a county lobbyist.

Schaefer recalled a scene in the summer of 1988 in which both sides of Wittenberg came into play and he found a balance between them.

A trial-court funding compromise that Schaefer, Wittenberg and county lobbyist Penny Bohannon had struck two weeks earlier with Assembly Speaker Willie Brown was falling apart. But Wittenberg and his family were on vacation.

“Joyce has this rule that Richard can absolutely never do county business on vacation, but Richard snuck away and called his secretary to see how things were going,” Schaefer said. “Penny and I were in the halls, grabbing members of the Legislature, and pretty soon here comes Richard in Bermuda shorts with Joyce and all the kids.”

By the end of the day, the compromise was saved. And so was Wittenberg’s vacation.