ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : Future Uncertain for Projects in Progress : Public works: From a police complex in Santa Ana to a new toll highway, the bankruptcy filing has raised fears about continued funding.

Larry Valle is helping to build a jail and police administration complex. He just hopes he’ll get a chance to finish his work.

City officials say the future of the $107-million facility, financed by the biggest bond sale ever offered by the city for a single project, is now in question after the county’s bankruptcy petition to ward of creditors.

“I’m kind of concerned now,” said the 30-year-old Lakewood construction laborer. “It was the topic of discussion at lunch” at the facility, which is about 20% completed.

Valle is not alone in his worry that county funds may dry up. Workers throughout Orange County whose projects are tied to county funding expressed similar uneasiness about their jobs.

“We haven’t heard anything yet and I’m kind of surprised,” said one construction worker at the Santa Ana site who refused to give his name. “Under these circumstances, anybody would be concerned about their livelihood.”

At the Transportation Corridor Agencies, which is building three major toll roads in Orange County, officials also expressed nervousness over the bankruptcy fallout. Officials offered a nervous prognosis: Their projects appear to be safe in the short term, but a cloud of uncertainty and fear hovers over the long-term picture.

“For the moment, there’s no sense of alarm,” said agency spokeswoman Lisa Telles. “But we are extremely busy. We’re trying to figure out how this is going to impact our projects, and more importantly, can we meet our payments? In the short term, we can. For the moment, we’re not concerned with meeting payrolls, accounts payable or stopping any construction.”

But as for the long term, “At this point, we just don’t know if we have long-term problems,” Telles said. “Our numerous bondholders and investors have the same questions the press has, and at the moment, we don’t have answers.”

Telles said the agency issued $1.1 billion in bonds for the San Joaquin Transportation Corridor in March, 1993, and $78 million for the Foothill/Eastern Transportation Corridor. “But I don’t know how many bondholders we have for either one,” Telles said.

The joint powers authority of the Transportation Corridor Agencies--which receives one-third of its funding from the county--has launched one of the most ambitious transportation projects in the history of Southern California, and any hitch now, Telles said, could have a devastating impact.

In Mission Viejo, the county’s fiscal mess will at the minimum cause delays in a $2.5-million library project, which depends on special tax revenues collected by the county. The Board of Supervisors was slated to approve turning over library tax receipts Dec. 13 in order to move the project ahead.

But the county’s financial disaster has placed those plans on hold, said county Librarian John Adams.

“This is just one example of the tremendous complications bankruptcy has caused,” said Adams, who added that county administrators haven’t contacted him about the Mission Viejo situation.

Many workers distanced from the swirl of media coverage around Orange County’s debacle doubted the trouble would cost them their jobs.

“We’ve heard all kinds of rumors. We’ve heard they were going to shut things down because there’s no funding,” said Jack Kobel, an ironworker from Anaheim who works on the Santa Ana facility. “But I’m not paying any attention to them.”

Likewise, workers at the Crown Valley Parkway overpass construction site of the San Joaquin Hills Corridor tollway seemed unconcerned about how the county’s fiscal crisis would affect the project.

“We were kidding and joking around about it yesterday,” said engineer Hank Sostrom, who works for a contractor building the toll road. “This is a real big piece of work and there’s a lot of work left. I can’t see anybody stopping us.”

Times staff writer Tina Nguyen and Times correspondent Frank Messina contributed to this report.