ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : How About Some Leadership?

Orange County is not unlike a family on a tight budget trying to plan ahead for a new car or refrigerator while also juggling rent, food and other daily expenses and saving money for emergencies. It can worry about making ends meet, but what it really needs to do is set priorities. It must find the means to pay for what’s needed and stick to the plan.

Since Proposition 13 passed nearly 12 years ago, the county’s ability to plan for long-term capital projects has been stymied. Meanwhile, the list of vitally needed facilities has grown longer: new jails, court buildings, a data center, a forensic science center. The county was warned recently by its own administrative office that borrowing for such projects could jeopardize its financial stability in the years to come. The county already is facing a $25-million shortfall this year.

The problem is that voters in Orange County have been in no mood to approve new taxes, as they showed when they turned down a half-cent sales tax measure for transportation and transit projects last November. There are other revenue-raising mechanisms available for capital projects, including bond issues, some of which have been successful elsewhere in obtaining the two-thirds majorities required under Proposition 13. But it takes leadership and more than a little political courage to put such measures on the ballot and then to advocate their passage. That is lacking here.

The county’s most pressing need is for new jails. The Board of Supervisors has tried several different ways to increase jail space since coming under a federal court order to do so, or else, in 1978. New projects have been stopped by “not-in-my-back-yard” neighborhood protests. Even the expansion of Theo Lacy Branch Jail was stopped by a lawsuit; a court recently authorized construction to resume. Meanwhile, thousands of jail inmates are being released early because of overcrowding.

The Board of Supervisors is understandably distraught over its budgetary woes. “We’re all sitting around worried about what we’re going to do,” Supervisor Thomas F. Riley said recently. But worrying won’t do for the county, any more than it will for a family on a budget. Priorities must be set. Then projects must be financed, one by one. And board members must take the political risk of supporting a tax increase or bond issue to pay for new jails and other long-delayed capital projects.