COUNTYWIDE : Roth Gives Up Gavel, Asks County Charter

In his 1991 state of the county address Tuesday, Supervisor Don R. Roth warned of a deepening budget crisis and called for creation of a county charter to give the board greater leeway in managing local affairs.

“A county charter has been looked at before, but it has not been studied with our current problems in focus,” Roth said. “I believe the time is ripe.”

The proposed charter could redesign county government in any number of ways by giving voters the opportunity to approve what would amount to the county’s first constitution.

In addition to political issues--the number of supervisors or electing the chairman of the board, for instance--a charter could create more flexibility in county budgeting, now subject to strict controls.

As it is, Orange County is a “general law” county, meaning that its programs and services are largely dictated by laws made in Sacramento. As a result, the county’s current $3.3-billion budget is almost entirely tied up in mandated programs or limited to specific funds.

For that reason, Roth noted: “We can’t use money in (the Department of) Harbors, Beaches and Parks for drug abuse counseling or flood control money for gang suppression or airport revenues for Indigent Medical Services.”

The charter recommendation highlighted Roth’s farewell address as chairman Tuesday, made just before he formally turned the gavel over to Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez. In his speech, Roth reviewed an eventful year, during which the supervisors wrestled with a series of emergency disaster proclamations--for the Huntington Beach oil spill and the Mediterranean fruit fly infestation--and occasionally clashed in heated disagreement.

Roth also used his address to lobby his colleagues against proceeding with a new jail in Gypsum Canyon, a proposal that has pitted the five supervisors--all Republicans--against one another for years.

“We simply don’t have a billion dollars to build the Gypsum Canyon jail, nor do we have $340 million a year to operate it,” Roth said. “We must redefine our thinking. . . . Because if we continue to proceed down the divisive path we are going on and on, nothing will be done. And we will continue to spend millions on worthless studies and grand designs.”

Roth, a former Anaheim mayor, has long opposed the jail’s being located in Gypsum Canyon, which is just east of Anaheim. A majority of the board disagrees, however, and last month voted to reaffirm its support for the site and to open negotiations with the Irvine Co., owner of the land.

While funding remains an obstacle, estimates of the jail’s cost vary widely. A scaled-down version, experts say, could cost much less than the figure cited by Roth. Still, even the money for a smaller facility would be hard to come by, as the county is badly strapped for cash.

Roth has been particularly mindful of the budget crunch during his tenure as chairman, and he took pains to remind his colleagues of it Tuesday.

“Most of all, 1990 was a time of struggle with finances,” Roth said. “I believe we came to a collective conclusion: We need to redefine the way we think about our finances.”

Indeed, even as board members heard Roth’s dire predictions of the county’s financial future, they were receiving a painful reminder of it: The board unanimously approved a proposal to cancel or postpone 10 planned construction projects for next year because there is no money to pay for them.

Among those were two waste-water systems--even though failing to upgrade them could subject the county to fines of up to $15,000 a day.