Dick Spotswood: Who would lead Marin if it was hit by a countywide disaster?

Here’s a quiz. Without looking below, make your best guess of the number of public agencies on the Marin County’s clerk registry.

The answer is 193. That’s the number contained in the clerk’s “Statement of Facts,” an index of all public agencies. A thorough review shows a few duplicates. Another more accurate index comes from Marin’s Local Agency Formation Commission.

Then there’s the question, who’s in charge when disaster strikes?

The commission reports 11 incorporated cities and towns, nine sanitary districts, eight community serviced districts, seven fire prevention districts, two public utility agencies, three water districts and four miscellaneous agencies (including a health-care district that doesn’t operate a hospital and county government, with its five-member Board of Supervisors).

There are joint powers agencies including the Ross Valley Fire Department and Central Marin Police Authority. Marin has 18 independently elected school boards, including College of Marin and an elected-by-district county Board of Education. Don’t overlook powerful regional governments, including the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit board, Golden Gate Bridge and Transportation District and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

The number of agencies is daunting. Multiplying them by five (the number of elected posts on most governing boards) and the result is hundreds of elected offices in just one medium-sized county. It’s impossible for even the most informed members of the public, local media or even Marin County’s Civil Grand Jury to track them all.

No one invented this maze. This piecemeal approach has been a feature of California since statehood in 1850. If we were drafting Marin’s governmental organization chart from scratch, we’d have 11 cities, county government performing the tasks of special districts in unincorporated areas and fewer school districts (each of which centered around one or two high schools).

This isn’t an indictment of those serving on these agencies’ governing boards. Even with good intentions, the current set-up results in an expensive loss of efficiency and needless duplication. The public complains about the cost, but when agency consolidation measures are on the ballot, we see that voters are often reluctant to change the comfortable status quo.

A downside of the multiplicity of jurisdictions is the obvious question that arises with a major emergency: Who’s in charge?

As recent wildfires devastated major parts of Los Angeles County, there was widespread public doubt as to who was in charge of efforts to contain the flames. At times of danger and uncertainty, there’s a need for an obvious, visible leader for the public to rely for accurate information and to provide a sense of action.

Blame has been heaped on L.A. Mayor Karen Bass for inadequately filing that role. It didn’t help that previously she had been a legislator with no executive experience.

There are 88 different cities within Los Angeles County. A multiplicity of responsible governments meant that L.A.’s leadership stage was overcrowded with public officials, all of whom had a claim to represent their constituents. When 10 people appear to be in charge, the reality is that then no one is leading the team.

The Los Angeles Times reported that no one person was seen as the leader of the team addressing the flames as they spread.

Compare that to New York City after 9/11. Mayor Rudy Giuliani was seen as the essential leader. He has since squandered his reputation, but he was clearly in charge when it counted – likewise in San Francisco after the City Hall assassinations of 1978. It was then Supervisor Dianne Feinstein who, as acting mayor, brought the city back together.

If Marin faces an L.A.-like calamity, who’ll step up to be our leader? We don’t have a county mayor. Whoever holds the rotating office of supervisor president would likely lack the countywide stature to be the obvious take-charge leader. For now, it’s a quandary with no answer.

Columnist Dick Spotswood of Mill Valley writes on local issues Sundays and Wednesdays. Email him at spotswood@comcast.net.