Question: So how many government employees does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer: Forty five. One to screw it in; 44 to do the paperwork.

Or, if we real-world this, one to screw it in. One to take a state-mandated coffee break. One to serve on a yearlong jury at full, regular pay. One to think up an acronym. One to facilitate it. One to analyze the domestic-partner implications of the project. And that leaves a skeleton crew of 39 to prepare the Environmental Impact Report.

Government workers have long been a productivity punch line. But in the last three decades, the humor has gotten darker.

Question: What is the second biggest lie of all time?

Answer: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you.

Everett Millais has tried to laugh along while facing an increasingly cynical tax-paying public. The low-key executive director of the Local Area Formation Commission, better known as LAFCO, retired last week after 35 years working for public agencies in Ventura County.

LAFCO is not, as Millais likes to say, a comedy club. Rather it is charged with directing orderly growth and assuring government delivers services efficiently. Government efficiency — now that could put a smile on your face.

During his tenure, public service has not always been the walk through a master-planned park we citizens believe it is.

For him, the desk-chair to rocking-chair security was not always there.

He saw government at its worst and its finest — once while working on the same project.

He came to realize the necessity of Proposition 13, almost universally maligned by anyone who has ever collected a public paycheck.

During his 27 years working for the city of Ventura his penchant for plain talk ruffled a few egos. He once dubbed a proposed structure "a truncated space ship." He called a property owner a "slumlord." I've seen some of his properties. I don't think Mr. Lord would want his mama living there.

The 59-year-old planner has been at it so long he was offered his job with Ventura via a telegram. It read something like: "Come to work for us. Stop."

The University of Pennsylvania graduate packed up his '64 Buick and headed to the Left Coast, believing the sunshine out here permeated even the layers of government.

At the time, Ventura was considered the very model of a modern municipality. Before it was mandated by law, the city hired a firm out of New Jersey to prepare its general plan — basically a blueprint of its growth.

The document was about 45 pages long, Millais recalls, and the thrust of it was pave everything between the Ventura and Santa Clara rivers.

The staff shelved the Jersey boys' recommendations and created parks along the barrancas, and wherever possible set aside open space.

Avenue conundrum

I could tell Millais took pride in that, as we sat in his anything but cushy 12-by-8 office in the county administration complex.

The mood was more mixed when he brought up the redevelopment of Ventura's blue-collar Avenue area.

Government does listen, he said. In fact, he listened to Mabel Nellie Owen when the longtime Ventura Avenue activist told him she'd like to simply be able to grocery shop in her own neighborhood. Back then, the supermarket chains avoided the Avenue like shoppers shun black bananas.

Millais and his colleagues wanted to lure Vons into a center at the corner of Main Street and Ventura Avenue. But there was a catch. Behind the center was a family-run metal recycling business, complete with scrap pile.

Private investors insisted the business had to go, even though shoppers would not see it.

Using the powers given government, the family was bought out.

The land, which lacked the frontage to attract foot traffic, became home to a famously failed strip center.

"That recycling business was their life. An unintended consequence of change is affecting people who didn't need to be affected," he said.

Following the rules

Government is not an efficient developer, he concluded.

And it does not always follow its own rules.

That, said Millais, is the number one reason he sees for the downward attitude adjustment in its citizens.

A resident who wants to enclose his patio has to go through a design review, but government can build a stadium without any such scrutiny.

Think about that bus stop behind the Pacific View Mall, and try to remember those ficus trees the city ordered cut down on Main Street.

The unkindest cut of all for Millais came in the late 1990s. His style and that of a newly hired city manager were not a good fit.

He printed up business cards and planned his leap into the private sector. It lasted six months before he was hired on at LAFCO.

There, he was charged with reviewing the work of every special district in the county.

That's when it hit him. All of them have taxation authority. And prior to the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978 they were all using it.

Millais compares the measure to a meat cleaver. But sometimes you just need a meat cleaver.

"People were being taxed to death, and they couldn't have stopped it any other way," he concluded.

I thought I saw Millais mist up once or twice during our conversation.

He was, after all, just a day away from retirement.

It happened as he explained to me why he didn't go into the more lucrative private-sector consulting work.

"I can," he explained, "walk around downtown and say I had a hand in that building or the way that park looks."

Consultants never see the results of their recommendations, he added.

He hopes today's graduates consider public service. It's a way for them to think globally and act locally. The effect of climate change will hit home to every jurisdiction in our nation, he believes. Think Ventura's beachfront.

He's heard the jokes about civil servants. He's laughed at them. But funny, he has no regrets about his government work.

— E-mail this Star columnist at ccason@Venturacountystar.com