O.C. Joins Other Counties in Summit on State Budget

With the state budget resolution barely a month old, Orange County is sending three of its top officials to meet today in Sacramento with leaders of the state’s other counties for a first-ever “budget summit” to plot strategy for next year.

“This (meeting) is something that’s without precedent,” said Orange County Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, a delegate, “but we’re dealing with a situation without precedent.”

Frustrated by the hits they took during this summer’s bruising budget battle, local officials see the meeting as a unique chance for counties to present a “united front” and get an early start in tackling the state’s tough budget decisions still ahead.

Although the next fiscal year is still nine months away, fiscal prospects for Orange County are already grim. Local officials have targeted 18 areas that they believe are particularly “vulnerable” to budget hits next year, according to a recent memo from County Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider to the Board of Supervisors.

The memo predicts that counties may have to trim still more from health care, mental services, public assistance for the poor, court operations, and local “special districts” that provide such services as fire protection, flood control and library funding. Each of these areas sustained deep cuts this year, as Orange County lost more than $35 million in state funds.

The list of vulnerable spots gives no estimate of the potential financial damage for the county, which earlier this year faced a budget shortfall of $108 million. But Schneider said in an interview that next year’s budget gap will likely run into the tens of millions as well.

Schneider concluded the memo by telling supervisors that “obviously the message . . . is that (the coming fiscal year) will be as challenging as the current fiscal year.”

As the state’s economic picture grows darker, many in Orange County see the fiscal prospects here as more than just “challenging,” but Schneider said in an interview: “I’m an optimist, and we will overcome this.”

Finding ways to overcome budget woes will be the task of county leaders from around the state meeting today in Sacramento at a “summit” organized by the California State Assn. of Counties (CSAC), the umbrella group that lobbies on the counties’ behalf.

The projected attendance at the meeting speaks to the statewide concern about fiscal issues, officials said.

CSAC Deputy Executive Director Victor Pottorff said at least 56 of the 58 counties in California are expected to send representatives. “I’ve been here 20 years, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that kind of turnout.”

Local officials suggest that the strong interest in the meeting stems in part from frustration among county officials over the budget debacle that ended in early September after a 63-day impasse. Some local officials believe that the counties were not as prepared as they could have been in fending off proposed cuts--particularly when pitted against such interests as the schools and the cities in bidding for a shrinking pool of state money.

County governments “rallied in the late innings,” Vasquez said, “but I got considerable feedback from Sacramento that the counties were not presenting the same kind of united front that the cities were.”

Indeed, Orange County Budget Director Ronald S. Rubino, who will attend the Sacramento meeting with Vasquez and Schneider, said he was surprised to find that many legislators in Sacramento simply don’t know what services the counties provide--such as courts and jail operations. “We need to make sure the state hears our story, too,” he said.

Schneider said delegates at the meeting will be “trying to put together a strategy--how to improve our credibility with the legislators, how to educate new supervisors . . . and how to minimize the effects next year.”

Today’s daylong session will include strategy sessions, discussions of short- and long-term solutions, and presentations on the statewide economy and budget prospects. But even with the counties’ early start, few are optimistic about the next fiscal year, which begins July 1, 1993.

“The economic forecasts show where we’ve been, and where we’re going doesn’t look much different,” said Pottorff of CSAC. “We’ve been through a fiscal Vietnam the past few years, and it doesn’t look like we’ll be out of the jungle for a while.”