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Service is hallmark of former county budget leader

Fred Plane to be inducted into Alumni Hall of Fame

By California State University, Bakersfield

February 24^th, 2026

Fred Plane has a reputation for quiet competence, a calm demeanor and reliability — not to mention his habit of saying “yes” when people ask him to serve his community.

The two-time alumnus of California State University, Bakersfield completed a well-respected 31-year career as a budget executive at the County of Kern and chief financial officer at Kern Medical Center. Then he just kept doing things to help his community.

He’s an active mentor and leader in the CSUB `Runner Alumni Mentor Program, a volunteer at elementary schools where his grandchildren study and has kept his 29-year side job as a lecturer in Public Policy and Administration Department at CSUB.

Plane has also served on the board of the Community Action Partnership of Kern (CAPK), the county’s official anti-poverty nonprofit, for 34 years. Jeremy Tobias, the CEO of CAPK, said Plane serves as the agency’s living historian and a steady, guiding hand.

“He's passionate about our community. He wants to see our community improve and be a better place to live,” Tobias said. “And I think Fred really encapsulates the true meaning of community service, mentorship and love of our community and love of the residents in our community.”

This week, Plane will be inducted into CSUB’s Alumni Hall of Fame. The other inductees are retired California Chamber of Commerce President/CEO Jennifer Barrera, retired Migrant Education Director Janie Flores, Kern County Superintendent of Schools John Mendiburu and Kern County Superior Court Judge David Zulfa.

Bakersfield roots

Plane moved to Bakersfield from Oregon at age 5 with his mother and siblings and attended Harding Elementary, Compton Junior High and then East Bakersfield High.

“I grew up in a blended family. We had five children. And so, when you have five children, you have a lot of order. My parents were pretty strict (and) had high expectations of all of us,” Plane said.

He left Bakersfield after high school to study biochemistry and then business at Pacific Union College, north of Napa. After his second year, Plane came back to Bakersfield to complete his bachelor’s degree in Business Administration at CSUB in 1978.

At the time, CSUB was still just CSB — not a university yet — and still very new. There wasn’t computer registration or automation and professors with fancy Ph.D.’s told you to call them by their first names, Plane said.

“I remember registering for classes in Dorothy Donahue Hall,” he said. “You went around to different tables. You knew what classes were going to fill up quickly, so you went there first. You got your card for each class and registered.”

His entire graduating class in 1978 fit into the administrative quad.

“It was a very, very laid back, more casual approach, more intimate approach. But the classes were every bit as challenging as what I'd previously taken,” Plane said.

After graduation, he worked for a doctors’ group in Bakersfield before taking a job with the County of Kern and beginning the career that would define his style of service.

Trial by fire

Plane started as a buyer in the county purchasing department in 1980 but eventually landed in the County Administrative Office, where he worked in the budget office managing the delicate art of negotiating county budgets with powerful public safety agencies.

His supervisor told him it was going to be a trial by fire. It was.

Plane was responsible for being a good steward of millions of dollars in public funds. But the job required him to manage the opposing priorities of the Kern County Board of Supervisors and of influential department heads like Sheriff Carl Sparks and District Attorney Ed Jagels.

The supervisors managed the overall county budget. But the sheriff, district attorney and several other department heads were also elected by the voters and had much more power to push back against budget cuts and advocate for more resources than other county departments.

The heat never got to him, though.

“He's very calm, very collected. He did not let anything rattle him. You know, when you're sitting across the table from a department head (that’s) an elected official, the sheriff, and you're having to have a difficult conversation with them, sometimes they'll get emotional. But I never saw Fred lose his cool. Not once,” said Kern County Treasurer-Tax Collector Jordan Kaufman.

Plane said he was able to handle the challenging work by making connections with people on a personal level.

With Sparks, success meant taking the time to truly understand what was driving the leader and how his office worked.

“I was very involved in their budget throughout the year, not just when we're developing it. He went as far as inviting me to come to his executive staff meetings every Monday. He exposed me to a lot of their operational issues, so it gave me a better understanding of they were trying to do,” Plane said. “And then I was able to get across to him where I was coming from.”

Plane tells the story of his first budget interaction with Jagels, Kern County’s hard-charging district attorney.

“He always wanted to fight because he's an attorney. That's what he's trained to do. That was his life,” Plane said.

Plane had a different approach.

“The very first year I was working on their budget, (Jagels) was in disagreement. So, I made my pitch to the board, he made his pitch to the Board (of Supervisors), and the board saw it my way,” Plane said.

Jagels came up and congratulated him afterwards on the win. Plane had to explain to Jagels that he didn’t see it as competition. Plane had presented the County Administrative Office’s point of view. Jagels was fighting for what he thought was right. And the supervisors did their job and decided which way to go.

Because of that, “I gained a lot of respect from him. Ed is still a friend of mine now until this day. He just called me the other day to needle me about my football team,” Plane said.

He is a passionate fan of the Minnesota Vikings, even travelling with Judge John Brownlee to England and Ireland this season to watch them play.

Public service

Plane’s passion for serving people grew on him slowly at first.

“When I was employed with the county at the beginning, it was a job that had decent salary and benefits, but I viewed it more as a job,” Plane said. “But then, after you're in it for a while, you realize you're in public service and you have a responsibility to the taxpayer to use those resources as effectively and efficiently as possible. The idea of public service grows on you.”

That realization eventually prompted Fred to head back to CSUB in 1990 to earn his master’s in public administration and develop stronger skills to support his work.

Plane eventually developed a reputation as a fix-it guy. Someone who could solve problems that others struggled with.

“I got the reputation primarily because I was a good listener. I would listen to both sides and try to build some consensus and resolve the issue to both side’s satisfaction. Maybe not 100% (satisfaction), but we got some resolution,” he said.

And, as Plane advanced in his career, he became adept at helping others excel.

“I met Fred Plane almost 30 years ago. when Fred and I both worked in the County Administrative Office. I started in CAO’s office in 1996. By the time I got there he was already, I will say, a seasoned veteran budget analyst,” Kaufman said. “I was green, and he taught me so much about the budgeting process. He really was sort of a mentor to me.”

Tobias counts Plane as a mentor too.

Plane took a position on the CAPK board while he was still working for the county and has spent more than three decades helping the agency fight poverty by providing low-income preschool education, energy bill assistance, free tax preparation, food assistance and a host of other benefits.

“Fred has helped guide an organization such as this through 34 years of ups and downs and in good times and bad times. His steady hand has helped the organization become the trusted community partner that it is here in Kern County and put us in a position where we could serve over 100,000 people a year here in Kern County, through 19 different programs,” Tobias said.

Plane ended his career at Kern County as the chief financial officer at Kern Medical Center, which was operated at the time by the Board of Supervisors. It was a critical link in the county’s heath care system as the only trauma center between Fresno and Los Angeles.

When Plane came on board, the hospital was struggling financially. Plane helped implement a productive management system that controlled the use of costly resources like the time spent by nurses and doctors. It was a tough, complicated problem to address because different departments had different needs.

“You have to convince people that you're not just concerned about the bottom line, because the hospital was losing money. We had to make some changes,” Plane said. “But you can't jeopardize patient care and patient safety. And a lot of the doctors and the nurses don't necessarily believe that from financial people initially. I had to go out of my way and meet with those different heads of departments and explain where I was coming from,” Plane said.

Serving CSUB

Plane has also been a huge presence at the university campus — where he earned his two degrees — teaching courses in public administration and mentoring students.

“I love doing the mentoring. I really enjoy giving back and helping these students learn how to network, learn how to do their resume writing, learning how to interview, giving them tips on where to look for jobs, things like that,” he said. “It's been really rewarding.”

CSUB Alumni Director Sarah Hendrick said his impact has been huge and they are excited about his induction into the Hall of Fame.

“All of us on the Alumni Board are truly delighted to recognize Fred, whose quiet generosity, faithful mentorship, and unwavering commitment to paving the way for others have made a lasting difference,” Hendrick said.

Plane does get paid to teach undergraduate and graduate students about public administration at CSUB, but he loves doing it.

“I thoroughly enjoy interacting with the students, being able to pass on some of my knowledge and my experience and help them understand what government is about and what public administration entails,” Plane said. “It’s challenging. It keeps me fresh, you know? It keeps me going.”

Recognition

Plane said his community service has always been driven by a feeling that he had something to offer and his desire to be of service.

“I don't get involved in the things that I do for any kind of recognition. I get involved because they need the skills that I have or that I can make a difference, especially helping young children,” Plane said. ‘If I didn’t want to do some of these things, I don't have to do it. But I enjoy it, so I keep doing it. And it's important for our community, especially in the work that CAPK does.”

Tobias said Plane’s kind of leadership is not common or expected but is often more impactful because of that.

“Fred is a quiet leader. He's oftentimes soft-spoken. When he does speak, everyone listens because of his knowledge and his background and his abilities that he has,” he said. “But he is not one for the limelight.”

Kaufman said this calm, competent servant leadership is why he’s being recognized by the university where he earned both his degrees.

“I think Fred deserves to be in the CSUB Hall of Fame for a variety of reasons. One is just his long-standing dedication to this community, to the county of Kern where he had a long career,” Kaufman said.

But the fact that Plane has also worked so hard to serve the county’s nonprofit community and dedicated himself to be a teacher and mentor to generations of CSUB students is truly remarkable, he said.

“Any one of those things, by itself, I feel could make him a candidate,” Kaufman said. “But the fact that he excels in all three of those areas really makes him an ideal candidate to be in the CSUB Hall of Fame.”

Tobias said he is happy to see Plane honored by the university.

“I think it's wonderful that Cal State Bakersfield is recognizing Fred Plane. I think it's well-deserved. He's a wonderful, wonderful Alumni Board member at CSUB. And he's the definition of a community servant — a community mentor for the entire community. I wish Fred the best. Always and forever,” Tobias said.

Plane said he knows just how big an honor it is to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, since he’s sat on the selection committee for inductees for the last four years.

“Well, it's humbling, and it's honoring at the at the same time,” he said. “I've seen the quality of people that we've chosen and to be in that same group with this year's inductees — with Judge Zulfa, and Janie and Dr. Mendiburu, and Jennifer — you know that that's an elite group.”

Alumni Director Hendrick said the selection committee had to step carefully and hold some secret meetings to keep Plane from learning that there would be a special fifth inductee to the Hall of Fame for the 20th anniversary of the program and that his name had been chosen for the spot.

“We knew it would be difficult to keep this from him given how attentive and engaged he is. During our deliberations, he suggested adding a fifth honoree in recognition of the 20th anniversary. I respectfully noted that, with an already full anniversary program, we would likely need to limit the class to four recipients,” Hendrick said. “Fortunately, he did not raise any objections, and with the help of his wife, Sheila, President Harper was able to successfully pull off the surprise.”