ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Preparing for a Rainy Day

Orange County’s most drastic budget-cutting in history seemed positively Draconian to many way back in June, before the long budget fight and dismal late-summer news arrived from Sacramento. The doomsayers were right, of course. It was as bad as all that.

But as the days dwindled down to a precious few, the county administrative office’s initial projection of about an $8-million loss in the general fund turned out to be very nearly--if painfully--accurate. The county’s early-warning system, its financial projections and squirreled savings from frozen positions, was sound planning for the hurricane.

In the final analysis this past week, the county still found itself looking at a cut of more than $37 million for the general fund, special districts and courts. That’s bad enough, although it was nowhere near as awful as the more than $586-million gap anticipated for neighboring Los Angeles County.

In Orange County, all this will surely mean that predicted losses of positions and curtailed services will take place in health care and mental health, as had been anticipated by county administrators and heads of agencies.

The county also finds itself now reckoning with some late hits that could not have been planned for. For example, some special districts will have to raise fees, and a last-minute reduction in trial-court funding came out of nowhere.

But in the areas where it did have control, the county bit the bullet early on. After supervisors unanimously approved a grim $3.5-billion plan on June 30, County Budget Director Ronald S. Rubino talked about a “big, black cloud hanging over us, and it’s called the state.” The county knew then what was coming. In preparing for the worst by applying plywood to the windows, it showed best how to deal with future storms from up north.