O. C. IN BANKRUPTCY : County Workers Try Hard to Keep It Business as Usual : Reaction: Few concede anxiety about security of their jobs or paychecks. ‘We’ve got stuff to do,’ one says.

Perhaps because it had been unthinkable for so long, county employees refused Wednesday to contemplate their employer’s bankruptcy.

From clerks and tax collectors to landfill supervisors, few were panicked and most expressed an unshakable faith that their pensions and paychecks are safe.

“We’ve got stuff to do,” said Townsend Price, an auditor with 14 years of service for the county. “We’re not sitting around talking about it all day.”

“Someone has got to push the papers,” said Lisa Williams, a clerk in the county auditor’s office. “I’m telling you, my job is not in jeopardy. . . . If this place shuts down, I’ll still have my job, because someone has got to push the papers. “

Among workers trying to take in some lunchtime sunshine at the Santa Ana Civic Center, most said they were anxious only about the media attention they’ve been receiving. Others admitted to a measure of sadness at seeing a man they admired, Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert L. Citron, resign under a cloud after 24 years in office.

But few conceded any apprehension about the future, despite the official frowning and uncertainty surrounding the county’s once buoyant investment fund, whose losses prompted the county government to file for bankruptcy Tuesday.

“I’m not worried,” said Floried Weigel, who said she works, ironically, in the “unsecure division” of the tax collector’s office, which handles certain kinds of private property.

Officials at the Orange County Employees Assn., a union representing 11,000 county employees, from clerical workers to building inspectors, said the morning was quiet, with only a few frantic members calling to ask questions.

Confidence was so high, in fact, that business remained brisk at the county’s employment office, where clerks had processed 35 job applications by midday.

Dan Budzinski, for instance, stopped by the office to pick up an application for the vacant position of “correctional services technician.” Budzinski wasn’t certain what such a title implied. But he was sure of one thing: Sooner or later, the county would fill the job.

“They’re always hiring,” he said, confidently. “The money’s got to come in from somewhere. I don’t see how they really could stop hiring.”

Williams, the clerk in the auditor’s office, has been trying to tell everyone the same thing. Having studied economics at Grambling State University, she told many fellow workers that the county’s bankruptcy filing was economic strategy, not defeat. But what if the strategy delays her paycheck, or endangers her pension?

“They’ll give me an IOU, pay me later. Who cares?” she said.

Added Gertrude Bornhoff, an accountant’s assistant: “I’m born in World War II, in Germany, so I’ve been through many things. We cannot change it, and we cannot jump into conclusions.”

Instead, Bornhoff and others kept their upper lips stiff--even while the occasional colleague went limp with worry.

“I’m here as a temp, hoping to get my foot in the door,” said Cathy Keodara, a clerk in the assessor’s office who recently left a full-time job to join the seemingly stable county government. Taking long, nervous drags from her cigarette, she scolded herself while her more fatalistic friends looked on:

“Sacrifice your stability to go into something even more rocky,” Keodara mused, staring at the ground.

“That’s life,” said her friend, Byung Kim, a deed clerk munching a piece of dried seaweed.

They weren’t even in the dumps at the Frank R. Bowerman Landfill in Irvine, a place supervisor Gary Brown said is filled to the brim with bravado.

“This is Orange County, man,” he said. “We hang tough.”

“If we can make it through a recession,” said an office worker at the landfill who would not give her name, “we can make it through this.”

“They’ll pull out of it,” Brown said of county leaders. “I think so.”