ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Scrooge Plan Needs Improvement

Scrooge himself couldn’t have planned it any better. Just two weeks before Christmas, the Orange County Board of Supervisors is facing new cutbacks--to be voted on immediately--that would freeze hiring and new construction. The board also will consider new revenue-raising measures, including a controversial proposal to impose booking fees on cities that use county jails, and even charging the sheriff’s deputies who work in them for meals.

The cost-saving proposals are contained in a mid-fiscal year budget report that provides a snapshot of a bigger problem: Government at every level has lower-than-expected revenues and an increased demand for services. Things are not expected to get better anytime soon, either.

So Orange County’s current budget situation is probably just a rehearsal for what it is expected to face at the end of the current fiscal year. By June 30, according to County Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider, the county may have an even more serious problem than it did last summer, when it had to trim services and raise fees to overcome a $46-million deficit. With that in mind, the county should draw up long-term strategies now, rather than reacting piecemeal to the anticipated bad news.

Orange County, like most other counties around the state, must try to balance an already overburdened budget at the same time its revenues are being squeezed by the state. It won’t be easy. Just ask Los Angeles County’s Board of Supervisors, which this week approved a package of cost-saving measures to protect the county’s mental health system from $41.9 million in cutbacks.

Orange County supervisors already have taken cuts to their office budgets, which are about $600,000 each, with most of the savings in staff salaries. Given the long-term outlook, the county must recognize earlier rather than later that bad times require drastic measures. And it should have a more comprehensive plan than asking deputies to buy their own lunches.