“You drive an Avanti?” I replied to John Morlach. It was early 1995. He mentioned his wheels at the end of the interview by our Orange County Register editorial board. “I have to see it.” So we went down and checked it out.

That’s what immediately came to mind when Moorlach recently announced he decided not to run to be Orange County’s auditor-controller, ending his political career of almost three decades.

The Avanti is the most beautifully designed car. It almost saved the Studebaker company, which went defunct in 1967, although other companies continued building the Avanti for some years after.

A year earlier, Moorlach, an accountant in private business, was running for OC treasurer-tax collector. His platform: warning the county’s finances were too risky and headed for bankruptcy. Few believed him, including our editorial board.

Incumbent Democrat Bob Citron enjoyed bipartisan endorsements. His high investment returns let local governments avoid painful budget cuts or tax increases. He won for the seventh straight election.

That fall the Federal Reserve Board sharply raised interest rates. Citron’s roulette wheel came up 00. Orange County on Dec. 6 declared bankruptcy, which cost $1.64 billion, at the time a record for a municipal default. Citron resigned and was convicted of six felony counts. The Board of Supervisors replaced him with Moorlach.

Our editorial board liked Moorlach from the beginning because of his focus on sound budget principles. He agreed with us maintaining OC’s reputation of having lower taxes than other counties in tax-nutty California was a key to prosperity. That has proved correct as OC’s unemployment rate consistently has been well under the state’s rate.

The bankruptcy made international news. Dozens of books on municipal finance feature Moorlach’s prophecy on Citron’s folly in “what not to do” chapters. There have been U.S. municipal bankruptcies since then, some larger, but none for the same faulty investment strategy.

Moorlach became a valued source on my journalistic “beat” of the finances of the whole state and OC school districts. He helped me decipher cryptic budget documents. And he rated local school bonds for their fiscal soundness, improving them greatly. He was neutral on whether voters ought to pass them, leaving opposition to our editorial board.

In 2006, voters made him a county supervisor, where he advanced such reforms as becoming only the second county to adopt Laura’s Law. It increased assisted outpatient treatment for the mentally ill. His CPA acumen also got the country through the tough Subprime Recession of 2007-10.

Voters sent him to the California Senate in 2014. In 2017 he picked me to be his press secretary. I was born six months before him in 1955, so I liked to joke about his youth. It was a great three years and I especially enjoyed working with his fantastic staff and lovely wife, Trina.

He worked again on mental illness reform, preventing the wildfires that have devastated the state and getting us through the COVID-19 crisis. But his main passion always was the budget, compiling analyses of every school, university, county and city budget in the state.

He also worked amicably with Democratic colleagues in the Senate, including Sen. Bob Hertzberg of Los Angeles and Senate President Kevin de Leon on Proposition 2 in 2018, which spent $2 billion on housing for the homeless using existing funding sources and, of course, no new taxes. De Leon currently is a Los Angeles councilman and candidate for mayor.

Related Articles

The public-employee unions defeated him in two elections for re-election to the Senate in 2020 and for OC supervisor again in 2021, outspending him three-to-one. They didn’t realize he was their best friend. Because when today’s budget surpluses evaporate, and in a future recession overspending starts bankrupting government budgets, pensions will be cut sharply. Look at what happened in Detroit.

Despite the fake $45 billion “surpluses,” total state unfunded liabilities still total more than $1 trillion. Unlike Bob Citron, I’m not going to predict the future. But the clouds of fiscal danger are ominous. The inflation is hitting family and business budgets as it did in the 1970s, which will cut tax revenues. Be aware and get ready.

In a better political situation, Moorlach still would be retiring – as governor after eight years, after having fixed the state’s unbalanced finances.

He still drives the Avanti.

John Seiler blogs at johnseiler.substack.com