Departing CAO taps deputy

When Paul McIntosh (pictured), Butte County’s chief administrative officer, packs up his desk in three weeks, he knows who he’d like to see take his chair: his most capable deputy.

McIntosh will leave June 30 to become executive director of the California State Association of Counties. In his resignation letter to the Board of Supervisors, he recommended Assistant CAO Starlyn Brown as interim replacement.

“She has spent 20-plus years in the office,” McIntosh said by phone from a conference Wednesday morning. “She has been intimately involved in the business we’ve been conducting. She’s well-known by members of the board. I think she has all the qualifications to be interim CAO—the CAO, though she may not aspire to reach that level.”

McIntosh, 55, the county’s top manager since 2002, has been instrumental in ongoing negotiations over the relicensing of Oroville Dam. “I have my regrets in leaving Butte County because of the unfinished business we have,” he said, “but this is that one opportunity that comes around only once every few years.”