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Photo by Bob Pennell Jackson County Administrator Burke Raymond gets a preview of retirment as he relaxes in a hammock in the backyard of his Applegate Valley home. Raymond, 65, has spent more than 30 years in public administration. Raymond's ready to retire Administrator for county reflects on his long career By PETER WONG More than three decades into his career in public administration, Burke Raymond faced a choice. As a program manager for Multnomah County, he was finishing up work on a much-debated $360 million sewer project. He had been city manager in Gresham and Beaverton, today Oregon's fourth- and fifth-largest cities. He had worked for four other cities in the Midwest. Then the three Jackson County commissioners invited him for an interview for county administrator. "I wanted to stay in Oregon; I definitely did not want to move back east," Raymond recalled. "I was intrigued the more time I spent in -- and looking at -- Jackson County." He and his wife, Cynthia, liked the drier climate and small-town atmosphere -- both a contrast with Portland -- yet the availability of cultural opportunities. He came to terms with the commissioners, who hired him as only the second administrator in the history of county government. On Thursday, Raymond will retire after four decades in public administration, a third of them as chief administrative officer of the largest local government. Jackson County oversees regional services such as libraries, parks, public health and housing, and prosecuting and supervising criminals. For areas outside cities, it also provides municipal-type services such as planning, road maintenance and sheriff's patrols. Its current budget is $159 million and it employs almost 1,000 people full time. Just seven commissioners have held office since August 1986, when Raymond was hired. "Looking at his background, I was expecting a more cerebral-type guy with glasses," said Hank Henry of Medford, one of the commissioners in 1986, who went to Portland to size him up. "But here is someone who looked like your grandfather. "I was highly impressed. He struck me as low-key, but he certainly knew how to make things operate. He kept the lid from boiling over on the sewer project, and he was good at that sort of thing." Raymond knew little about the turmoil that preceded the departure of Paul Steinbrenner, administrator from 1980 to 1986. Henry said the departure was by "mutual agreement." "The organization was in deep trauma," Raymond said. "But from a pragmatic point of view, it made it easier on me." His predecessor, the first to hold the job, was criticized as too authoritarian. Though he held tight rein on budgets, Raymond sought to be more easygoing. "My philosophy is that you try to get the best people you can afford to hire, set some goals and directions, and make sure people have ownership of them," Raymond said. "Then you let them do it, not look over their shoulders every step along the way." That team underwent its severest tests a few years later, after the main source of income for Jackson County government -- sales of timber cut on federal forests -- began to decline this decade. Commissioners set aside millions from record sales in the late 1980s as a cushion against cuts, but Raymond said they knew that reserve would not last. "One of the things we agreed then that we needed to do was to earn the voters' trust," he said. "We were never going to be granted additional taxes until people recognized that the county was an important part of their lives and they needed its services." He and the commissioners set up citizen panels to review how county government was set up, what it did and why it did it. They merged agencies, cut or dropped services, focused on service to the public as "customers," and enlisted the help of employees. After voters approved a five-year property tax levy for law enforcement in 1994, they rejected an increase in county government's permanent taxing authority in 1996. But they approved a pair of three-year levies that fall -- including the first-ever levy for general services -- and subsequent changes in state law made those levies permanent. "Everyone told us that one levy would kill the other," Raymond said. "But voters passed both." Though its finances are relatively stable today, Raymond said a downturn in the region's economy would slow the countywide growth in property values that has produced enough in taxes to offset the county's continuing losses from federal payments. Those federal payments are guaranteed through 2003-04, but counties await future action by Congress. "I always knew I wanted to work for local government," Raymond said. "I am still satisfied with the choice I made." That choice perhaps was foreshadowed by his parents. His father was a history professor at Hope College in Holland, Mich., and a city council member. His mother was "what we would call today a civic activist." "Growing up, it was like getting three meals a day and a place to sleep," Raymond said. "We got to talk about civic issues from the national level to what was going on in the community. So I ended up being interested." But he made his career choice only after his second stint in college. After completing courses there for his master's degree in public administration, but before writing his thesis, he went to work for the city of Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan. During the 1960s, local governments throughout the country hired more people and became more professional as growing communities struggled to meet public needs deferred during the Depression and World War II, such as streets, sewers and schools. "In the 1960s, the attitude was that if we needed to do something, we said, `Let's do it' and it got done," Raymond said. "Now, there are more ways to say no than you could ever have imagined. But we did not do all those things with as much care as we could or should have." Raymond agrees with the perception that the public has less confidence in government -- and almost all other institutions -- than it did when he started four decades ago. He said people have greater access to information, which makes them more skeptical about institutions as sources of authority. But he also said those institutions have failed to change with the times. "Most of our institutions are operating under the forms that were put in place during the Industrial Revolution," Raymond said. "Government has operated under centralized authority and hierarchial control, but people do not live that way today. So we are not seen as being relevant. We are seen as being in the way. "I think we have to do some radical changes in how we do things." Raymond said government now resembles business in many ways, including setting goals and measuring performance toward outcomes. But he said government differs from other institutions in at least two important ways. "Government has to establish and enforce the rules by which the game is played," he said. "Government wears the striped shirts, so we have to expect a certain amount of heated arguments from the players and booing from the stands. But I doubt anybody would advocate that the referees leave the field. "Some people are unable to participate in the game, temporarily or permanently," he said. "Government has the responsibility to ensure that those people are not trampled." Upon his retirement, Raymond said his children have urged him and his wife to consider moving back to the Portland area. But he said he dislikes the rainy climate, the growing traffic and the soaring housing costs. The home he bought there for $58,000 in 1976 and sold for $106,000 a decade later, when he came to Jackson County, was on the market last spring for $385,000. "For the time being, I am happy right here," he said. "Even though it has had its problems, I could not wish for a better place to work than Jackson County -- and it is a great place to live." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA