Governments’ Fiscal Woes Not Over in ’93

In a year of cutbacks, closures and acrimony for government budget-makers, city leaders in Garden Grove vented their fiscal frustrations with a single, tongue-in-cheek sign, placed atop a police car.

“For sale,” it read.

Politicians aren’t ready to sell off their police fleets just yet. But the statement came to symbolize the mounting frustration over what many have declared the worst fiscal year for local governments in recent memory. And with the state already facing a multibillion-dollar shortfall for the next fiscal year, 1993 promises many of the same headaches, officials say.

“I think everyone thought this last year was about as bad as it could get--the bottom of the abyss,” said William E. Hodge, executive director of the League of California Cities’ Orange County chapter. “But it’s looking already from what we’re hearing from the state that ’93 may be even worse.”

With the recession in California generally predicted to last throughout the year, officials say budget problems for Orange County and its 31 cities will likely affect more people than ever before.

Squeezed by budget reductions, many public libraries will have fewer new books and be open shorter hours. A growing number of government offices will close on some Fridays and curtail regular office hours as well, making it tougher to get a building permit, challenge your tax assessment, apply for welfare or use a wide range of other government services.

Government employees face a greater threat of layoffs than ever before; more roads may fall into disrepair; there will be fewer park employees and some police departments expect to cut down on non-emergency reports.

“We’re not going to see any magical turnaround in ‘93,” said County Budget Director Ronald S. Rubino, who last year oversaw efforts to plug a $100-million hole in the county’s $3.5-billion budget. “What government is going to end up doing is spending 80% of our efforts deciding what we’re not going to do because we just don’t have the resources.”

In the year now over, a string of financial scandals did little to help the claims of a few cities that they had little control over the budget problems that had beset them.

In Orange, for instance, the city lost $7 million in stolen funds to convicted investment adviser Steven D. Wymer. And in Newport Beach, city utilities director Robert J. Dixon admitted making off with $1.8 million in public money over a 10-year period.

But scandals aside, local politicians around the county pointed bitterly at the state as the cause of their budget woes. Some went so far as to suggest an amendment to the state Constitution that would ensure a minimum funding level for local governments and avert the now-annual funding raid by Sacramento.

Local governments were among the biggest losers in last year’s budget debacle.

After a historic two-month logjam, Gov. Pete Wilson and the state Legislature agreed on a budget plan that transferred $1.3 billion in property-tax revenue from local governments to the schools, translating into millions of dollars in lost funding for most Orange County cities.

“From the standpoint of . . . service to our residents, ’92 has been a disaster,” Garden Grove Mayor Frank Kessler said earlier this week. “Sacramento is balancing its budgets on the backs of the cities.”

The fallout from the year’s budget problems was seen around the county.

San Clemente considered shutting down its 64-year-old Police Department and turning over law-enforcement services to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department to save money. A decision is due in February.

In Orange, employees agreed to accept a 10% pay cut through a work-furlough program in order to avoid about 150 layoffs.

Costa Mesa did not have the money needed to hire nine new Fire Department employees for a new station in the South Coast Plaza area, so it will have to transfer employees from elsewhere.

In Seal Beach, officials talked about surrendering control of the city’s prized beach to the state because they might not have the money to run it.

And at the county level, the Board of Supervisors froze or eliminated hundreds of positions and agreed to close many of its offices every other Friday beginning in February. It also closed down a mental health clinic in Garden Grove and cut back on a wide array of health and social services relied upon by thousands of the local poor.

With a greater reliance on public services, the poor have felt the effects of budget cutbacks more acutely than anyone, especially during the current recession, officials say.

Robert Cohen, director of the Legal Aid Society of Orange County, which uses federal and state funds to provide counsel for the poor in about 14,000 cases a year, sees evidence of this nearly every day.

Deep cuts in public funding to his agency have made helping these people increasingly difficult, he said. This year, for instance, he expects state funds to his office to be cut by 16%--despite a rising demand from the public.

“We have never received so many requests for services. The system is terribly overburdened,” he said. “A lot of folks are very angry and they’re wondering how come we’re not helping them. . . . They’re generally just seeking more in the way of services than we are able to provide.”

Times correspondent Anna Cekola contributed to this report.