Supes Master the Art of Stepping on Toes

What is this, Pick-on-the-Orange- County-Board-of-Supervisors Month?

Enough already. Knocking the supes is like shooting fish in a barrel and, frankly, I’m sick of it.

Give these people a break. It’s not like they aren’t trying.

Or are they?

It’s not really for me to say. I’m just throwing it out as a possibility that maybe, just maybe, they’re not trying to alienate every single bloc that comes before them.

Someone once said you can’t please all the people all the time. If memory serves, it was former Supervisor Don Roth just before he took a plea bargain with the district attorney’s office, but I’m not sure. Whoever said it first, the current supervisors have turned the phrase on its head: They can’t please any of the people any of the time.

The latest indignity came this week when a senator from Arkansas hopped on the bandwagon. How far do you have to sink as a California legislative body before an Arkansas senator jumps you?

Kind of makes you wonder if there isn’t a Web site out there, letting people around the country know they can feel free to come into Orange County and trash the supervisors.

The Arkansas traveler is Tim Hutchinson, a Republican no less.

Again, you have to marvel at our supes’ almost uncanny ability to make political enemies without regard to race, creed, religion or party affiliation.

We’ve got five supervisors, all Republicans. If a Democratic congressman showed up to trash them, you’d take it with a grain of salt. But our Fearless Fivesome rankle even people in their own party, who travel great distances to let them have it.

Hutchinson’s pique involves a board decision this year that would guarantee union labor on virtually all county construction projects, including an El Toro airport job.

Right. As if any laborer will ever tote a barge or lift a bale at an El Toro airport . . .

That’s another story. As Hutchinson said at the hearing, “I grew up thinking that Orange County was this bastion of conservatism . . .�

It’s Easy to Make Enemies

That was the old Orange County, run by previous boards. This board makes enemies as effortlessly as most people make their morning toast. In its printed agendas, it has replaced “New Business� with “People We Can Antagonize This Week.�

It’s almost axiomatic now, when writing about the board, to refer to it as “embattled� or “beleaguered.� If only the board could rise to that level. I’d put them closer to “woebegone.�

At home, the board has alienated fully half the county over the El Toro airport issue. And even among the pro-airport contingent, many of them are upset with how the board has managed to muff the momentum it once had.

Not content with that level of opposition, the board has thrown down the gauntlet to a potentially potent coalition of health-care advocates over how to spend federal tobacco-settlement money.

And just a couple weeks ago, unhappy taxi drivers picketed the board in protest of its decision to award a contract to a competing firm. Whoever heard of taxi drivers protesting?

In short, this board has done the nearly unthinkable: It’s made most people forget about its predecessors who slept while the county slipped into bankruptcy.

What to do about this? Is there any way to stop the bleeding and give our supervisors time to recover?

I feel somewhat guilty, because I’ve taken some shots from time to time. A former supervisor used to liken media snipers to soldiers who stand on nearby hillsides and shoot the wounded.

That smarts, but it was such a good line I don’t mind repeating it.

Anyway, I’ve come to realize that if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

So, citizens of Orange County, support your local supervisor. Send him or her a nice note or, if you’re especially generous, a box of chocolates.

Tell them you know they’re trying hard not to muck things up.

Believe me, that’s the nicest thing anyone will have said to them in months.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to [email protected].