Separate Votes Urged for Needed Facilities

For several years, Orange County officials have been searching for ways to raise more money to ease the problems of growing traffic congestion and jail overcrowding.

Local, state and federal financing has thus far been woefully inadequate to build the roads, transitways, freeways, and a new jail and courthouse that the county needs to keep from losing even more ground and avoid paying what will surely be higher construction costs later.

But the County Board of Supervisors, unlike the boards in other major counties in the state, has been reluctant to bring the financing problem to the public in the form of a vote on either a bond issue, sales tax increase or the creation of a special district.

A proposal seeking a 1-cent increase in the local sales tax for transportation was put on the ballot and rejected by voters, in June, 1984. It is time that the county board took the issue back to the people, not only for transportation but for more courthouse and county jail facilities.

In recent days there has been renewed discussion about seeking two half-cent sales tax increases, one for roads and the other for the courthouse and jail. And the county’s Legislative Planning Commission has decided to push for state legislation that would at least allow the supervisors to call for a countywide vote on a half-cent sales tax increase for a new courthouse and jail, if they decide that is the way to go.

The supervisors should put the issues--separately--before voters. Combining them in an all-or-nothing package runs the needless risk of losing both. If there is support for both, they will pass separately, as well as combined.

Properly presented, there is a good chance that residents would approve both measures. Voters in San Diego did. In November, 1987, they approved a half-cent sales tax increase to raise $2.2 billion for transportation improvements (after previously rejecting a local tax increase) and then 7 months later approved another half-cent increase in the sales tax to pay for new jails and courtrooms. And Los Angeles voters, who had approved a sales tax increase for transportation, subsequently approved a bond issue for more jail facilities.

Orange County voters might well do the same. The need here is certainly as great as in neighboring counties, and Orange County is now the only heavily populated county in the state without a special transit sales tax. And recent surveys have shown growing support for a half-cent tax for transportation projects.

The inescapable fact is that Orange County needs transportation, jail and courthouse improvements but lacks the money for them. County officials should put the proposed sales tax increases on the ballot to let the public decide whether it wants the improvements enough to pay for them. If nothing else, the elections will show that public officials have done everything possible to raise the needed money, which could help in securing more federal and state funds that understandably may go to the communities willing to dig a little deeper to help themselves.