Input Sought In Search For New Contra Costa County Administrator

By Sam Richards, Bay City News Foundation

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, CA — The search is on for the next Contra Costa County administrator, with the upcoming retirement of David Twa, the county's top executive for the past dozen years.

On Tuesday, the county Board of Supervisors discussed beginning the search for Twa's successor. A key element of the search, supervisors said, will be to get as much public comment as possible on what they want to see in the next county administrator.

A caller into Tuesday's Zoom meeting said he wants the next chief executive to be "socially aware," and supervisors echoed that. County Supervisor John Gioia said he wants candidates to have "a dedication to social equity and inclusion."

Supervisor Federal Glover said he wants to field suggestions from the public about hiring a new county administrator before hopefuls are identified and interviewed.

The supervisors hired the executive search firm Peckham & McKenney in June to help find Twa's successor, and paid that firm $30,500. The hope is for preliminary candidate interviews to happen in late September and early October, and for the county to select a new administrator by late November.

Supervisors on Tuesday said they will miss Twa's steady hand, experience and expertise. County Supervisor Karen Mitchoff later amplified her feelings about Twa.

"He has kept Contra Costa County fiscally sound — even during some very severe financial downturns — and got us to a AAA (bond) rating from Moody's," Mitchoff said Wednesday. "David has an extraordinary capacity to listen to his five very different supervisors and synthesize sometimes disparate points of view on an issue and present options to us to address the problem.

"He has a very calming presence, he's even-tempered, and (has) a great sense of humor," Mitchoff added. "I'm going to miss David terribly."

Twa was the county manager for Ramsey County, Minnesota (which includes St. Paul, but not Minneapolis) when he accepted the Contra Costa County administrator's post in June 2008. Before that he served two elected terms as county attorney in Blue Earth County (Mankato), Minnesota.

That Twa is leaving isn't really news. He said that he told the supervisors last year of his intention to leave when his three-year contract extension is up at the end of 2020 (or sooner, depending on when they hired a successor). His eventual departure has been mentioned at supervisors' meetings from time to time over the past several months, but Twa didn't submit his formal notice until May.

So given all of the COVID-19-derived hardship and grief facing Contra Costa County and municipal governments everywhere, is this a good time to retire? No, Twa said.

"It is a bad time in the sense that my goal has always been to leave the county in better shape than it was when I started," Twa said Wednesday.

He also explained that he told his wife that this would be his last year, and that she has been anxious to return to his native Minnesota, where they have five grandchildren.

Twa said he's proud of a number of actions he's helped shepherd through over the years, including consolidating and reorganizing several county departments "to provide better services at reduced cost;" reducing "Other Post Employment Benefit Liability" (not unfunded pension liability) from $2.4 billion to $662 million and enacting a plan to bring that number to zero over a 30-year period.

He has also overseen the county's technological advances, including putting the Board of Supervisors' agenda documents and supporting information online; and the completion of the Interoperability Communication System that allows Alameda and Contra Costa counties, and most of their cities, to operate on a common emergency communication system.

As for what awaits his successor, Twa said reducing Contra Costa's current $677.7 million in unfunded pension liability will be a key challenge.

Others, he said, include dealing with increasingly polarizing politics; working through the economic volatility coming out of the COVID-19-caused recession; changing demographic trends; continued work on providing health care for Contra Costa County residents; and helping provide economic opportunity for all residents and further tackling the homelessness problem.

Twa said he arrived in Contra Costa County in time to help with economic recovery from one national recession, but barring a quick miracle turnaround, it will be up to his successor to help lead the next local recovery.

"From the beginning with the Great Recession to ending with the COVID 19 Pandemic, it has been both a challenging and rewarding journey," Twa told the supervisors in his May retirement letter.

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