ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : VOICES

Here are comments from readers who called The Times with opinions on the county’s financial crisis. Call TimesLine at 808-8463 and press category *8300, or fax us at 714-966-5663.

Gosh, I guess we had the corporate raiders and the greed of the 1980s, and looks like it caught up to us in the 1990s here with the Orange County supervisors. I think speculative investing like that should be left to people who can afford the consequences. There’s an old saying: Never invest money you can’t afford to lose, and I feel that the county Board of Supervisors and the treasurer were being pretty avant-garde with other people’s money.

BILL THEOBALD, NEWPORT BEACH

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I am ticked and really, absolutely messed up about how something like this could happen in our county. . . . It’s absolutely absurd that one man can have so much power and all of the supervisors had no control or didn’t have any idea what was going on.

STUART SOLLOD, IRVINE

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A couple of days ago you published the perks received by each member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors. My reading is that these perks are only the tip if the iceberg and that the perks are much more profound and serious. . . . Asking them to resign is just an extreme kindness on our part. I think the bums should be fired right now. We have other people who can step in and do just as well--if not a lot better--than they have done.

JAN LINEBERGER, TUSTIN

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Mismanaged money--public money--is going to affect me as a citizen here, and I feel that a class-action suit should be filed against the county for mismanagement of funds. And I think that the supervisors should be held completely responsible for this. There should be more checks and balances set up to prevent this from happening again.

A.J. SHEPARD, NEWPORT BEACH