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.

This outrageous loss of our tax dollars violates the fundamental trust we placed in the county government. All involved--the money managers and supervisors--should resign in disgrace for gambling with funds they were only charged to protect.

RICHARD COOK, HUNTINGTON BEACH

*

The fault clearly lies with Robert Citron and his advisers and the entire Board of Supervisors--both past and present--who were too busy banging up their county cars on their way to their lavish affairs to read the internal and external audits that had been submitted to them, without exception, over the past decade. But, it would be fair, however, to subtract the added return earned by Mr. Citron over the years from the $2.02-billion loss.

ANN SHEPHARD, LAGUNA BEACH

*

A basic concept of investing has always been, “the greater the return, the greater the risk.” “If it sounds too good to be true, you can bet it is.” If the supervisors were doing their jobs, they would have reviewed the audits. My opinion is they were too lazy to question Bob Citron!

The office of treasurer should be one appointed based on knowledge and not an elected one. In fact, this should be handled by a professional Wall Street brokerage firm, not a crony or quack as is the case all too often.

Don’t waste our money on committees from Sacramento to ooh and aah over what has happened. We know what happened and why. Now it needs to be corrected and to never happen again. What about a volunteer citizen task force to review and make recommendations. We have an outstanding group of qualified retired citizens who would jump at this opportunity to get inept government out of our everyday life.

LES ALTMAN, FOUNTAIN VALLEY