County Must Move Decisively on Fees : Supervisors Better Get Cracking on Solutions to Crisis

The new year arrived with a dose of cold reality, the need to figure out how to plug the county’s gaping financial hole resulting from the collapse of the investment fund.

The county already has made $42 million in painful cuts, but this is really a drop in the bucket in view of the fact that it ultimately must trim $172 million of what it had planned to spend during the last six months of the fiscal year. The Board of Supervisors had better get cracking.

Several incumbents are already skating on thin ice over their lack of oversight. But while there are questions about how much they knew about trouble in the fund, or whether misrepresentations were made, there can be no excuses for what they know now. The case for whether individual members stay or go will depend to a degree on what they do about getting the county’s fiscal house in order. Their political stock is so low that exercising real leadership for a change would be a gamble without much risk.

No high marks are to be awarded for performances in recent days. Supervisors Gaddi H. Vasquez and Roger R. Stanton told a state Senate committee last week they didn’t want a state bailout. But the county can’t have it both ways. If it intends to right the ship itself, it must implement soon a realistic and credible program of deep cuts and new sources of revenue to facilitate the recovery. What are we waiting for?

Much has been made of Orange County’s prevailing anti-tax sentiment, but one does not have to look too far back in history to find county voters disposed to implement a sales tax increase where a real need can be demonstrated, such as the passage of Measure M to improve transportation. Perhaps a sales tax increase, with a sunset clause built in, would prove unpalatable, but the county has nothing to lose and everything to gain by at least considering it before dismissing it outright.

Some temporary fees and other new sources of revenue may have to be looked at. A few sacrifices, shared by all in an improving economy, to get the county, its schools and local agencies back on their feet may be a price people are willing to pay. Certainly they should be. Alternatively, refinancing debt would itself be a form of deferred taxation, but taxation on future generations.

People do want and expect county government to function well. But more and deeper cuts are going to have to be made. Somehow, the county is going to have to find some savings in the $462 million in discretionary spending in the $3.7-billion budget. The county needs to avoid cutting too close to the bone, to ensure that local government is able to function.

The county administrative officer has suggested various approaches that would allow the county to privatize services, pay less than going wages for public works projects, sell or lease property without bidding, and pass some fees back to the state, such as the county share of Aid to Families With Dependent Children.

There are proposals to increase the fees from the county agricultural commissioner and sealer of weights, to establish fees for Local Agency Formation Commission services, and to set special-use surcharges for general purposes, and to increase library fees.

The county has no choice but to think creatively about all these proposals. Call them new fees or call them new taxes, the county must act decisively and put together a program soon that addresses the need to make restitution for the losses to the fund, and get this county positioned again to take advantage of its bright future.