Voters to County: Spending Bucks Stops Here : That’s message from defeat of Prop. A sales tax increase, Prop. C’s attempt to hire more deputy sheriffs.

The San Diego County electorate sent some clear messages to county government Tuesday, all focused on a single overriding concern: money. Don’t ask me for any more, the voters said. Don’t limit your options in finding it elsewhere. And don’t come up with programs you don’t know how to pay for.

That was the collective message from voters’ rejection of Proposition A’s sales tax increase and Proposition C’s requirement to virtually double the staffing levels of deputy sheriffs. The only county ballot measure voters approved was Proposition B, requiring future amendments to the County Charter that call for spending to specify a funding source.

That message probably found a receptive ear with the two newcomers voters also selected, Encinitas City Councilwoman Pam Slater and Dianne Jacob, former chief of staff to retiring Supervisor George Bailey. Both campaigned as fiscal conservatives bent on making the cash-strapped county produce more with less.

As Slater put it, “We need to reallocate, streamline, and best utilize existing resources.” That’s a tough statement to disagree with.

True, San Diego County is not receiving its fair share of revenue from the state. Many of its financial problems aren’t of its own making. But as Jacob and Slater pointed out in their campaigns, while the battle for fiscal equity is being fought in Sacramento and the courts, there is much the county can do to help itself.

Both supervisors-elect have specific proposals that deserve careful scrutiny. Jacob says as much as $100 million can be squeezed from the county budget by doing such things as cutting executive salaries by 10% and by lowering the ratio of employees to county population. She notes that in recent years the number of county employees per citizen has risen at five times the rate of the population.

Slater has proposed cutting the administrative overhead in every county department by 5% and launching a top-to-bottom independent audit of just where each dime of the county’s $1.9-billion budget goes.

Both women believe cuts can be made without gutting current service levels. That’s yet to be proven, but just a few months ago the county grand jury essentially agreed when it accused the county of wasting $70 million a year on welfare fraud alone.

Headlines like that make voters legitimately skeptical about putting more money into a purse that might have a leak. We suspect the two new supervisors got the message. We hope the rest of the board did too.