Day of Reckoning Here for Supervisors : * Budget Cuts Are Inevitable, But at What Future Cost?

In this summer of understated sunshine, perhaps understatement is the appropriate response to the cloudy budget news hanging over Orange County. Gaddi H. Vasquez, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, recently surveyed the devastation wrought by proposed budget cuts and said: “The financial resources available to the county have been greatly reduced. Our mission will be to reduce the size of government where appropriate.”

Well, that certainly sums it up. A field of wreckage lies before the supervisors after last week’s budget hearings. They now face the unenviable task of adopting the final budget on Aug. 27, and are looking at making up a $67.7 million shortfall in a $3.5-billion budget--a savings that will cost an estimated 351 jobs. So extensive are these recommendations from the County Administrative Office that even volunteer programs are threatened, because county staffers oversee them, too. And among the long list of painful targets is “Operation Santa Claus,” which distributed nearly $500,000 worth of gifts to needy children last year.

Besides the emotional favorites, there are a flock of items on the chopping block that arguably will cost taxpayers somewhere down the line, as the programs fall like dominoes. For example, if mentor services for welfare mothers go as planned, what will happen to every politician’s dream of eventually returning folks to the work force and, hence, off the public dole? If the 60-bed Joplin Youth Center closes at a projected savings of $984,000, what cost later to local government if the state then must house juvenile inmates? What intangible price lies ahead for society when such a facility closes that, according to the county’s chief probation officer, has “helped thousands of young men turn their lives around”?

These expenditure questions, which touch on people’s very attitudes toward the role of government in society, are not so easily answered. What is clear is that whatever programs are spared, and whatever go, the county is going to to have to make do in ways never before experienced. The county is no longer in the position of providing new services to meet the demands of a growing area. Pruning is never easy, and it is even less so because of the way the county’s needs have changed.

There is some political pain, too. Sheriff Brad Gates, told that he could lose 78 employees and his helicopter patrols, was acutely mindful of that dimension of the job; as an elected official he asked for the prerogative to make the actual cuts himself. Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi, also an elected official, was conscious of the public’s frustration with crime, and the difficulty he will have prosecuting cases if he has to cut 30 positions as requested.

But, alas, a host of factors conspired to bring the county to this painful day of reckoning. The recession has affected revenues. The incorporation of cities has drained county resources, while state government has expected more of them. The state budget crisis has had a ripple effect. And people have come to look to county government to provide more of their needs in an increasingly needy society.

Meeting those demands now, under these new trying circumstances, will test the character of the county’s leadership. And it will require sacrifices of Orange County’s citizens in ways not yet imagined.

Cooperation between public and private sectors can help. It ought to be possible to consolidate some programs and to find a few fresh ways of meeting needs. Rising to the occasion is the great challenge before Orange County.