Perry Reniff, retired Butte County Sheriff, recently wrote a letter to the ER praising Mike Ramsey. In his conclusion, Reniff stated : “The DA’s office, like any other business, must be managed by an experienced professional leader.”
Well, Perry, the DA’s office is not a business. Businesses supply goods or services in exchange for money. That’s not how the DA’s office is supposed to work.
Most small businesses are managed by the owner. Appearances to the contrary, Mike Ramsey does not own the DA’s office.
On a corporate scale, there would be shareholders, directors, and CEO’s. The DA’s office is not a corporation either. Actually, it’s a bureaucracy funded by public money and managed by an elected official.
The key word here is “elected.” In other words, every four years there could be a change of guard. Such change is actually encouraged by the election codes. There are only two legal requirements for DA candidates: (1) They must be California licensed lawyers, (2) who live in Butte County. This means that a very wide range of lawyers could conceivably be elected as District Attorney: Family law practitioners, corporate lawyers, or legislative wonks who have never set foot in court.
With this sort of fluidity built into the law, any district attorney’s office must be organized so that periodic changes of leadership can occur with minimum disruption. It’s not an outlandish idea. All over our great state, there are routine transfers of power every four years or so. Everywhere except the Butte County DA’s office, that is.
According to Ramsey, the DA position cannot be filled by anyone who lacks his long years as head DA, which is 23 and counting. Ramsey seems to forget that he himself was appointed when his predecessor abruptly resigned. If “experience” is essential, then by definition Ramsey was doing a piss-poor job during his first few years as DA.
By his own admission, during the last 23 years Ramsey has apparently tweaked his office into a bastardized creation that “only he can run.” In the brutal world of politics, when the “shareholders” finally rebel, there will be no fat stock options or golden parachutes. It will simply be: “Hit the road, Mike.”
