County’s Final Budget Proposal Cuts 240 Positions : Spending: Layoffs are predicted if supervisors approve document. Some programs have been spared but Sheriff’s Department braces for reductions.

More than 200 county government jobs are being axed under the final proposed Orange County budget, and officials said Thursday that they will have to make their first layoffs in 13 years if the Board of Supervisors adopts the plan next week.

Although budget officers have spared about 100 positions during the complicated talks of the past few weeks, proposed cutbacks in law enforcement and other services rocked some county officials.

The proposed $3.7-billion budget was completed Thursday and distributed to the Board of Supervisors.

“This budget has a little pain for everybody,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez said. “But I’m confident that we have a budget that is first and foremost a way of living within our means.”

As news of the proposed cuts spread, some officials expressed alarm.

“We’re going to have fewer officers, fewer investigators,” said Undersheriff Raul Ramos, who is managing his department while Sheriff Brad Gates recovers from hernia surgery. “The sheriff realizes that the board has a deficit to make up, and we don’t mind doing our fair share, but the public is going to feel this.”

Although Ramos’ comments were echoed by several other top county officials, nowhere was the reaction to the cuts sharper than in the Sheriff’s Department.

Ramos sent a memorandum to senior managers in the department Thursday afternoon. A copy, obtained by The Times, warned that “the press will carry stories on our budget problems for the next several days, and I would like our members to have a foundation from which to judge the information.”

The cuts, Ramos said in the memo, would slow investigations of murders, sex crimes and organized crime activities, and would force the department to drastically revamp the way it does business. For instance, Ramos said, “use of overtime is a thing of the past.”

The proposed budget was hammered out in meetings that included representatives of all five members of the Board of Supervisors, so approval of the final document is considered a virtual certainty. A few small changes might take place before the final vote Tuesday, but virtually no one expects significant amendments to the delicately balanced spending plan.

The county government entered its budget hearings last month facing a shortfall of $67.7 million. A combination of new revenue and service cuts made up the difference, so that the final document is balanced, as required by law.

As the supervisors reviewed the proposed budget, several acknowledged that it includes difficult cuts. However, they also stressed that it restores some of the high-profile areas that had been targeted for reduction or elimination.

Indeed, the spending plan is a study in mixed blessings. Under the proposal:

* 240 government positions would be eliminated, but departments have found enough revenue to save another 101 jobs that last month also were on the chopping block. All told, about 85 county employees are expected to lose their current positions--the first since 1978--but fewer than originally anticipated.

* The Human Relations Commission, a popular 20-year-old panel, would be saved, but its sister organization, the Commission on the Status of Women, would be folded into it. Their combined budget, which originally was $432,000, would be cut in half, to $229,000.

* The Probation Department would eliminate a drug-diversion program, complicating jail overcrowding, but the Joplin Youth Center, a home for seriously delinquent youngsters that was targeted for closure, would be spared.

* Support for the government-run shelter program would be cut back even as estimates of the number of homeless people in Orange County skyrockets, but the shelters would stay open this winter rather than close their doors, as some had feared.

“Nobody likes this,” said Ronald S. Rubino, the county’s budget director. “But we’ve worked hard to get an acceptable compromise, and everybody understands the necessity of this.”

Department heads and other county officials generally agreed, noting that while the cuts to their areas could take a toll on services, tight budget times have left few choices.

“These things are going to hurt,” said Michael Schumacher, the county’s chief probation officer, whose department will lose 21 positions, including the entire six-member staff of an adult drug-diversion program that provides rehabilitation to small-time drug offenders.

Rusty Kennedy, executive director of the Human Relations Commission, agreed.

“I’m grateful that the board has placed enough priority on this commission to keep it,” he said, adding that an aggressive lobbying campaign by supporters of the commission helped it win a place back in the budget.

Leaders of the Commission on the Status of Women, which under the proposed budget would cease to exist as an independent group, were less sanguine.

Nina Hull, who chairs that group, wrote to Vasquez on Thursday to express her continued opposition to the proposed merger.

“Women’s issues cannot be addressed with the depth, effectiveness or sensitivity by the Human Relations Commission on a reduced budget and reduced staff,” Hull said in her letter. “It is my expressed desire that this Board of Supervisors not make Aug. 27 (when the supervisors vote on the budget) a day of inequality for the women of Orange County.”

Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, who has called the budget now before the board the “most difficult one I’ve been involved in during the past 17 years,” nevertheless said he was pleased to see that enough money was found to save a few of the programs once targeted for elimination.

In particular, Riley has lobbied for continued funding to the county shelter program, which runs out of a pair of National Guard armories during the winter.

“I realize that we still have a difficult budget situation,” Riley said. “I’m pleased that we’ve been able to bounce back a bit. But after years of cutting back, this year it finally caught up with us.”