At what would normally be an uneventful annual passing of the chair of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, open warfare erupted between Supervisor John Moorlach and Supervisor Janet Nguyen. The first volley came during the vote for the slate of incoming chair and vice chair. Without specifically naming Nguyen, who was the nominee for chair, Moorlach expressed concerns about the management style of the incoming chair and voted against her election. With no further discussion or dissention, The slate was elected 4/1. Moorlach’s little salvo could have been the end of it, but Nguyen fired back a broadside at the end of the meeting.
Janet Nguyen, current Vice Chair and now the Chair Elect, represents the First District which includes Garden Grove (Portions of), Santa Ana, Westminster, and John Moorlach represents the Second District, including Costa Mesa, Cypress, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove (Portions of), Huntington Beach, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Newport Beach, Rossmoor, Seal Beach, and Stanton. The Board of Supervisors’ web page includes this comment: “The five Board Supervisors are elected by the voters of their district to four-year terms. Each district varies in geographical size, however, the populations are equal at approximately 600,000 residents.
The action took place at the regular supervisors’ meeting on Monday of this week. Moorlach fired his first shot during the vote for the new officers, but while his comments certainly were derogatory with regard to Nguyen, they were at least somewhat oblique. But, when Nguyen launched her public counterattack at the end of the meeting, there was nothing left to the imagination.
During the vote and referring to incoming chair Nguyen, Moorlach said “I wish the chair the best, but I just hope that we have a good approach when it comes to enlightened leadership and servant leadership.”
At the end of the meetings, each supervisor has an opportunity to make a statement of their choosing. That’s when Nguyen fired her broadside. She said “I do not want to take up this board’s time to engage in Mr. Moorlach’s petty political agenda; however it is important that the people of this county do not misperceive my silence as admission to either the merit of those comments or the person that made it. Supervisor Moorlach’s comment on management style and his hope for good open governance leading to his no vote are ironic in the least. We only have to do a cursory review of his performance during his tenure as chair to see the lack of courtesy and decorum, the likes of which I have not seen in almost 13 years since I started working for the Board of Supervisors.”
Moorlach, saving his return fire for the next day, did not make any comment when it was his turn for a final statement. Then, he explained his no vote in a blog posting on the Orange County Register’s site. It reads, in part, as follows:
“All this to say that Supervisor Nguyen’s management style is to bite people’s heads off. The list of recipients is quite long, thank you. The CEO, department heads, heads of related organizations. If she doesn’t get her way, then she’ll excoriate you. I did not explain this during the Board meeting as this item was pushed through in a rather hasty manner. I didn’t get a chance to speak until I had to cast my vote. But, Supervisor Nguyen made the point for me. At the conclusion of the meeting she bit my head off. Thank you, Supervisor Nguyen.
Supervisor Nguyen has a history of demanding that executive managers hire people she demands, and then becoming angry when they do not. Supervisor Nguyen has a history of being unprepared at Board meetings, repeatedly claiming that she never received information from our County staff, when every other office received and reviewed the information, and, if needed, discussed it with the CEO at his weekly pre-Board meeting briefing of each Board office. But, since Supervisor Nguyen cancels her weekly pre-Board meeting briefing more often than not, she misses another opportunity to be educated, and then yells at County staff in public, claiming they haven’t responded to her concerns.
The cornerstone of the County’s management philosophy is the concept of “servant leadership.” Indeed, our management and Board consider this concept so central that we send our managers to a ten-week course at Chapman University, called the Orange County Leadership Academy, where they are inculcated in the culture of servant leadership. This concept stresses that good leaders should first strive to be good servants—that we are there to serve others, not to have others serve us. Janet Nguyen’s management style of yelling, being unprepared, and demanding the hiring of her friends, is the antithesis of servant leadership.
The issue now is how vindictive and true to form will she be? She could have said, “Supervisor Moorlach, I will prove you wrong in 2010 and show you that I am up to the task.” Instead, she chose to characterize my restrained concern as “petty politics,” and to characterize my year as Chair of the Board as one characterized by “a lack of courtesy and decorum.” I have waited the majority of my three years on this Board for Supervisor Nguyen to mature in this role. It just hasn’t happened.”
The above text was taken from the Orange County Register blog because it was not posted on Supervisor Moorlach’s web page. The most recent posting we could find on his page was from October. Thus, we could not verify the text or guarantee that it is genuine or accurate.
Since Moorlach had the opportunity to carry the fight beyond the board room with the above posting, OC180NEWS.com wanted to give Supervisor Nguyen a chance for rebuttal. We contacted her office but she was not available. We were told that someone would call us back with a statement, but no call came.
