ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : Agency Heads Sort Spending Options : Operations: Public health services such as trash pickup, TB prevention and restaurant inspections are deemed essential. Vasquez heads new management team.

The triage has begun.

Tuberculosis testing, trash disposal, restaurant inspections--these are services county administrators say the public can’t do without. But well-child visits, outreach to prevent mental illness, and landfill improvements may fall by the wayside as the county scrambles to recover from fiscal disaster. Top Orange County officials reluctantly prepared Wednesday to take the paring knife to non-essential services, revealing for the first time what some of those services might be.

A Board of Supervisors resolution approved Monday ordered all department heads to prioritize their contracts with thousands of providers, honoring only those that were “necessary to protect health welfare or safety of county residents” or prevent economic hardship.

“We’re using as criteria what is of most benefit to the community--and keeping the community out of danger,” said Dr. Hugh Stallworth, the county’s director of public health, who was still working on his priority list Wednesday. Department heads--some of whom had already turned in their recommendations--said they are preparing for a worst-case scenario.

Meanwhile, the county supervisors Wednesday created an Operations Management Team, headed by Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, to make day-to-day decisions and help determine where to pare.

“It will expedite communication,” said Vasquez, whose team includes Sheriff Brad Gates, Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi and Health Care Agency Director Tom Uram.

Vasquez said it was not clear when all the departments would submit their lists to the team or when final determinations would be made on which contracts to slash.

In other action Wednesday, Supervisor William G. Steiner recommended in a memo to the county’s bankruptcy attorney that $2.9 million be paid to more than 100 organizations that do business with the county, providing everything from foster care to abandoned infants to inpatient care for the mentally ill.

The supervisor, who was appointed as liaison to nonprofit agencies, noted that most of the money could be billed to federal, state and other funding sources.

Low-priority items on preliminary lists prepared by administrators--which have yet to be approved by top officials--range from furniture for Superior Court to a $35-million project to close a mothballed county landfill. Stallworth said certain prevention services, such as well-child checkups, would fall toward the bottom of his list. Such exams “could be done by other clinicians in town and . . . could be delayed (with) minimal hazard to the community,” Stallworth said.

Infectious diseases such as AIDS and tuberculosis, as well as immunizations and food inspections at restaurants, have been assigned top priority, Stallworth said.

“I’m comfortable that the community health will not be jeopardized,” he said--although he and his staff are less comfortable with the “big unknown” of what will be cut and by how much.

Similarly, county Mental Health Director Timothy P. Mullins said his list, completed about 2 p.m. Wednesday, has near the top such things as medications and involuntary detention for the severely mentally ill, as well as support and care of patients in residential facilities. Prevention services for youths, for example, were deemed less important. He said drug abuse services receive the bulk of their funding from the state and federal governments, so they may not be as heavily affected.

Mullins and Stallworth said they were not asked to make recommendations on layoffs, but merely to prioritize programs or services.

Murray Cable, director of the county’s Integrated Waste Management District, said he submitted a list to the county administrative office that would suspend 80% of his agency’s contracts and would cancel most of the rest.

“The things that need to be done in order to bury the refuse and to protect the public’s health and safety are the things that will be done,” Cable said, adding that other contracts might be abandoned.

Any contracts for planning or reports, or plans for building at the three open landfills, are in limbo, as is a five-year plan to close the mothballed Santiago Canyon landfill. Only services that will keep refuse coming into the landfills and enable the department to continue earning money, and the regulatory activities key to protecting the air and ground water, will be provided, he said.

“We have contracts for archeology and paleontology in case we run across a fossil,” he said. “Under law, we’re still going to need to bring someone out to do that. . . . We will start that again, but in these (emergency) conditions, I don’t need to have someone come out and look at a whale bone.”

Vendors who supply the county with equipment remained in limbo Wednesday, more than a week after the bankruptcy filing. Nonprofit contractors remained anxious as well about when--and whether--they would be paid, although some were hopeful that Steiner’s recommendation would help their cause.

Agencies dependent on state and federal dollars administered by the county said they could not afford to wait much longer. And county department heads said they are increasingly worried that state and federal dollars they receive may be jeopardized if they can’t come up with the required matching county funds.

“If this goes beyond two months, we are going to face having to close our doors to be able to survive as a corporation,” said Art Amidon, executive director of Roque Center Inc., which provides detoxification services and a long-term alcohol recovery home for 104 clients. That agency was on Steiner’s list as one that ought to be paid the $56,479 it is due.