ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : Voices

Many Orange County residents reacted with frustration and anger at the county’s financial crisis. Here is a sampling of comments received from readers invited to telephone the newspaper’s TimesLine number with their comments.

“I suppose I am ultimately responsible for this financial crisis because I voted for Robert Citron knowing the riskiness of his investments had been questioned, but I thought that was just Republicans being sour grapes. If I had realized that he was investing in derivatives, that would have been a trigger for me because I have been concerned about the danger of derivative investing. I wish I had understood more about what was happening and perhaps I might have voted differently. But I think we, in the electorate, are ultimately responsible. I think the supervisors are doing the only thing they could in filing for bankruptcy to prevent a run on the bank at this point.”

Jeanne Harris, Mission Viejo

“This bankruptcy shows just how desperate public officials are to spend even more taxpayer funds. For example, four Orange County school districts borrowed millions at low rates to gamble on even higher rates and more money for their self-serving projects. This shows just how desperately we need another even more restrictive Proposition 13 to keep public officials from bankrupting us.”

John Mullins, Huntington Beach

“I am very concerned about the impact on our services and our quality of life. A lot of things are going to suffer. I am very concerned about the impact on our education. This demonstrates to me once again that our elected politicians are basically politicians full of rhetoric and yet do not have the abilities to run and manage money for the citizenship as a business. It is unconscionable to me that this amount of money has been invested and allowed to be lost without any kind of oversight or any kind of audit trail. I think the citizenship of the county of Orange should be very upset and I think that it almost borders on malfeasance.”

Jerry Thompson, Irvine

“Definitely, there is a lack of investment philosophy for this O.C. portfolio. This philosophy would tell you what to invest in or not to invest in, or how much to leverage or not leverage at all. I can’t understand how leveraging is allowed for this kind of portfolio, because Orange County is not in the business of making money, but to provide services. In order to provide service you have maintain solvency. There must be some sort of checking or control system. How could the discretion of investing funds fall on such a few individuals’ shoulders, such as Mr. Citron? Do they have some sort of committee that would actively oversee his demeanor? Or just a bunch of rubber stamps?”

Kory Ngo, Orange