Orange County Announces Plan to Lay Off 400

More than 400 Orange County workers will lose their jobs and nearly 300 other positions will be eliminated under budget-cutting proposals unveiled Tuesday in what officials say is the beginning of a massive effort to shrink government in the face of bankruptcy.

“This has been a death in the family called Orange County,” said Sheriff Brad Gates, whose own department must cut 129 full- and part-time jobs, give up such items as 98 phones, six fax machines, 10 cellular phones, bottled water deliveries and limit jail inmates to coffee with breakfast only.

“This has not been a comfortable situation for us. This has been emotionally draining.”

The layoffs, forced retirements and elimination of open jobs--along with cuts in contract services, training, travel, supplies and leases--are expected to save the county $42 million over the next six months. But officials concede that they are just a fraction of the cuts that will be needed to make up for a $172-million projected shortfall in the budget year ending June 30.

Most of the layoffs--102 of which previously had been reported--will come from the county’s General Services Agency, the Health Care Agency, the Sheriff’s Department, the county administrative office and the auditor-controller’s office.

Shortly before the scope of the cuts was announced, more than a dozen angry laid-off employees lashed out at the Board of Supervisors, saying they could not pay their mortgages and support their children. There have been claims of discrimination and favoritism as the layoffs began sweeping through the ranks of county workers.

“I had no responsibility in these financial decisions, so it does not seem fair that I am now being punished,” said Manucheh Yazdi, 62, a research analyst in the County Administrative Office who was fired after 14 years of employment.

Yazdi said he put his Irvine home on the market last week, cannot make his car payments and cannot afford health insurance for his wife, who had been covered under his county health plan.

Still, in his State of the County address, Board of Supervisors Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez tried to sound optimistic about the county’s fiscal future.

“I have full confidence that we will regain our financial footing,” Vasquez said. “We will re-emerge a stronger Orange County. We will learn the bitter lessons of this experience and make changes.”

As budget cuts were detailed Tuesday:

* A major credit rating agency downgraded $220 million in bonds issued by four local school agencies that had borrowed heavily for the sole purpose of boosting their return from the county’s investment pool.

Standard & Poor’s lowered the ratings of the Irvine Unified School District, the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, the North Orange County Community College District and the Orange County Board of Education to speculative grade.

* About 40 residents demanded the resignations of school board members and top officials of the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District. The homeowners were angry at the district’s decision last August to borrow $50 million to invest in the county pool. “The action you took was overwhelming,” said resident John Parker. “The only (equal) action you can now take is to resign.”

* In Anaheim, Mayor Tom Daly and Councilman Frank Feldhaus were served with recall papers after Tuesday night’s council meeting blaming them for the $45 million the city stands to lose in the county pool. But City Clerk Leonora Sohl said the recall papers appear to be invalid because they were not properly prepared.

* The Committees of Correspondence, a citizen organization that includes members of Ross Perot’s United We Stand group, asked the Board of Supervisors to fire County Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider. The group also called on the board to immediately appoint John M. W. Moorlach, who lost last year’s election to then-Treasurer Robert L. Citron, as county treasurer.

* The judge overseeing Orange County’s bankruptcy case approved the release of $46.5 million to the Orange County Transportation Authority from the county’s frozen investment fund. Transportation authority officials said the money will be used to pay employees, make bond payments and continue construction projects.

* In Sacramento, there was no quick fix for Orange County’s fiscal predicament in the 1995-96 budget released by Gov. Pete Wilson.

One ray of hope was a planned 2.2% increase in funding for elementary and high schools, which one Wilson Administration official said should help Orange County’s beleaguered schools.

“Obviously, those school districts should be pleased that additional money will be coming on July 1,” said Maureen DiMarco, Wilson’s education chief. “It’s going to help in Orange County--absolutely, no question.”

But the state’s actions were little consolation to county employees as department heads began announcing specific cutbacks.

All told, more than 400 full-time and temporary jobs are to be slashed: 186 full-time employees will be laid off; 172 full-time temporary employees will lose their jobs; 49 workers who contract with the county must find work elsewhere.

In addition, 233 unfilled positions will be eliminated, and the jobs of 31 workers who agreed to take early retirement will disappear. Another 27 positions--previously bankrolled by the county’s general fund--will now be paid through state and federal sources.

The layoffs hit five agencies most heavily. Forty-four full-time and temporary employees were to be fired in the Health Care Agency, 72 already had been laid off in the General Services Agency. Another 129 full- and part-time employees lost their jobs in the Sheriff’s Department, along with 27 workers in the county administrative office and 19 others in the auditor-controller’s office.

Among the casualties in the Health Care Agency were a nurse who conducts well-child examinations, workers who provide education for community groups on chronic disease, and translators and community outreach workers in the Latino, Cambodian and Laotian communities. Under state law, these and other cuts affecting indigent patients must be reviewed in a public hearing, which was set for Jan. 24.

At the Sheriff’s Department, the layoffs will include training personnel and members of an anti-gang education program. (Gates said he hopes private donations can revive the program.) The department will reduce its helicopter service from two crews to one and plans to suspend Laser Village, a training program that allows deputies to simulate shooting scenarios in a safe, high-tech environment.

Gates, who helped determine the overall cuts as part of a three-member management team, said department heads were told that their reductions should be permanent and carry over in the following years.

“These are hard decisions, and it just doesn’t get any easier. . . . It looks like we’re going to have to make more cuts and I just hate that part of it,” Supervisor Jim Silva said Tuesday night. “The employees are angry, and I think they have a right to be.”

Most county department heads predicted that public services would not change--but might slow down. Besides eliminating jobs, many agencies found creative ways to trim the fat.

Gone will be the Probation Department’s electronic surveillance program--the 160 criminals involved will have to go back to jail, or back to court for re-evaluation. Ditto for the department’s south county drunk drivers’ program.

The General Services Agency is returning its high-tech copier, figuring the shrunken work force will have less to copy. The treasurer-tax collector is canceling a planned purchase of a laser printer. A special fax-back program that increased access to public documents got the ax.

“Some things are going to get done slower--but they’ll still get done,” said Deputy Auditor-Controller Chuck Hulse. “Everybody’s working harder.”

Bill Baker, director of the Community Services Agency, added: “We may not be able to do as much as quickly as we wanted to, but we’re still going to try and provide the services to the clientele.”

In presenting their reports, several officials warned that they were cutting close to the bone. “The $1.2-million reduction in the marshal’s budget represents an extraordinary effort to assist the county in working through an immediate financial crisis,” wrote South Municipal Court Judge Ronald Kreber. “It would be irresponsible for the courts to commit to reductions of this proportion on a permanent basis.”

Other department heads expressed similar dismay.

“We managed to hold essential services together, which was the idea, but everything else--while they’re still important to us--had to go,” said Chief Probation Officer Michael Schumacher.

While most department heads agonized over the cuts, there was some sense of relief Tuesday that the dreadful decisions were done.

“There was a feeling of awfully deep anxiety around this place: Am I going to be cut? Am I not going to be cut? So to that extent that anxiety has been relieved,” said General Services Agency Director Bert Scott. “But there’s no way you can lay someone off and put a happy face on it. A layoff is never a happy thing. There’s no way it can be anything but a sad, traumatic event.”

The layoffs provoked an outcry from the Orange County Employees Assn., the biggest union of the county’s 18,000 workers. The group is trying to determine whether there has been any discrimination on the basis of age, gender or union activities.

During Tuesday’s board meeting, Vasquez, the new chairman, gave his State of the County address and suggested ways for the county to remake itself.

Among his proposals: Creating an investment oversight committee of financial experts to advise the supervisors on investment strategies, establishing a county finance department to work with the treasurer, holding at least one board meeting a month at night to provide better public assess, and requiring all department heads to present annual reports during public meetings.

Times staff writers Eric Bailey in Sacramento and Debora Vrana, Lee Romney, Julie Marquis, H.G. Reza and Correspondents Shelby Grad and Russ Loar in Orange County contributed to this report.