BUENA PARK : City Asks Court for Permission to Sue County

The city filed a motion in federal Bankruptcy Court this week asking to be released from an automatic stay that prevents officials from suing the county.

City Manager Kevin O’Rourke emphasized that the city is not breaking from other investors who have funds frozen in the county pool, although Buena Park is the first city to take this step. Three water districts have filed the same motion.

O’Rourke said city officials felt they had to position themselves to take independent legal action to recover the $28 million the city has in the county pool.

City officials have long maintained that the county holds the investors’ money in trust and that all of it must be returned.

“These are not assets of the county, and they treat it as though they are assets,” said Mayor Don R. Griffin. “We do not feel that is a fair position.”

Other cities and agencies probably would have taken this action sooner, but they had hoped the county would come up with a plan to cope with the fiscal crisis, officials said in a prepared statement released Wednesday.

“We continue to work with the creditors’ committee,” O’Rourke added. “The position of the creditors’ committee has been not to file these actions. We had warned them that we were planning this.”

The statement said that the city continues to lose interest on money in the fund while the county delays action. “Several different deadlines have been missed by the county with inexplicable reasons,” the release said.

“What we are looking at is representing our community and the citizens of Buena Park,” Griffin said. “We don’t have a comfort level with the kinds of information and the lack of response from the County of Orange. We are not getting timely information from the county and we need to know how we are going to run our city.”