ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : 14-Year County Veteran Loses Job With Stanton : Layoffs: Executive secretary and another employee in the supervisor’s office are among first to feel effects of county’s financial crisis.

After days of worry and 14 years of service to Orange County, Ruth Allison got the bad news this week: She will be among the first to be laid off from her county job.

“I think this stinks,” Allison, an executive secretary to Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, said Wednesday. “On top of everything else, with the bankruptcy and everything, it just stinks.”

Allison, 56, said she and another employee in Stanton’s office were officially informed Tuesday that their jobs would be eliminated by mid-January. But Allison, who has worked for Stanton about five years, said she has been expecting the bad news since Friday, when she found a memo about possible layoffs on the printer beside her desk.

After Allison asked about the matter, Stanton’s executive assistant told her that she might be affected but that nothing was firm yet. The same assistant, Kathleen Freed, delivered the news Tuesday, but Stanton himself has yet to speak to her on the subject, Allison said.

“I said, ‘Why me?’ ” Allison said. “She said, ‘It’s because you’re the most highly paid’ ” of the three secretaries in the office. She makes just over $40,000 a year, she said.

“I went back to my desk and cried for about an hour,” she said, breaking into tears over the phone. “This is a real nice Christmas present. That’s really class, to let people go right before Christmas. . . . I’ve got a lot invested in this county and I’ve worked my tail off for them.”

Ironically, Allison said, she came to the county 14 years ago because she was looking for a stable job, one that would provide a better retirement than the position she left as a secretary for a bankruptcy trust attorney.

Stanton, she said, “wants to make a good example (by reducing his staff). But why is he cutting two women . . . including one single woman? I have excellent skills. I’m known for doing quality work. I still can’t believe this.”

Reached at his home late Wednesday, Stanton said he would not comment on the layoffs. “I will not discuss personnel matters in the paper,” he said. “I don’t know how you found this out or who told you. I’m not going to comment on it.”

The second employee, Jennifer Kemp, will work two days a week starting in January until she finds another job.

Her position in Stanton’s office, which included everything from producing a cable television program to writing speeches for the supervisor and communicating with city officials in his district--will not be refilled immediately.