Clinton Keeps Santa Ana River Plan in Budget : Government: $72.6 million is allocated for the project, which is designed to guard against a 100-year flood. The status of other capital improvements in O.C., including a freeway ramp, remains in doubt.

Funding for continued construction of the massive Santa Ana River flood control project was included in President Clinton’s $1.6-trillion budget submitted to Congress on Monday.

But the status of other major Orange County projects remains in doubt as the Administration refines its spending and as the dust settles from the Orange County bankruptcy.

In what has been an otherwise bleak outlook for capital projects because of the bankruptcy, Orange County officials welcomed the Administration’s inclusion of $72.6 million for the flood control project.

The nation’s largest-ever flood control plan is designed to protect against the 100-year flood that experts say could wipe out thousands of acres from Anaheim to the Pacific Ocean.

The continued funding, however, does not address the Orange County Flood Control District’s long-term problem: how to make up the $112 million lost in the county’s troubled investments pool--money that was to be used to purchase land and raise the Prado Dam in Riverside County.

The Prado Dam construction was scheduled to begin in 1997 but could be delayed about a year because of the financial setback.

William L. Zaun, Orange County’s public works director, said Congress will be asked to reduce the district’s share of the estimated $400 million cost for the final phase from 60% to 25%.

But Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) said Orange County officials should not expect a federal bailout at a time when Republicans are intent on cutting the federal budget.

“Even though we have suffered a financial setback, the federal government has every right to expect Orange County to still maintain its commitment,” Rohrabacher said. As a possible compromise, Rohrabacher said that maybe Congress could agree to stretch out the county’s payments toward the project.

One major project facing an uncertain future because of the bankruptcy is ramp construction at the San Diego Freeway and Costa Mesa Freeway connectors, said Jim McConnell, Orange County’s lobbyist in Washington.

Design work was suspended by the Orange County Transportation Authority after the county filed bankruptcy, McConnell said. The OCTA was the largest investor in the county’s investment fund that collapsed late last year.

“So the question there is, ‘When will the OCTA be able to revive that contract and how much of the (previously appropriated) $20 million can be spent in the fiscal year?’ ” McConnell said.

The federal government is expected to pay 75% of the $249-million freeway connector project, said Tom Fortune, OCTA’s government relations manager.

Apparently dropped from the books are the transit funds that were to be used to build a mammoth parking garage at Disneyland, as well as related traffic improvements in Anaheim.

“We have told (federal transit officials) we want to drop that for now,” Fortune said, given Disney’s abandonment of what was to have been a $3-billion expansion called Westcot. He said the money for Anaheim’s traffic improvements may be pursued later.

Funds for the transportation projects were not usually included in the Administration’s budgets but were later added by Congress, McConnell said.

Adding to the uncertainty this year is the proposed restructuring of federal Transportation Department. The department’s newly unveiled budget “should be taken with a grain of salt,” McConnell said.

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) said federal funds for Orange County that were to be allocated under last year’s crime bill may be scrapped by Republicans who want to change the rules for how the money is distributed to communities.

Rohrabacher said no project is safe as Republicans begin sharpening their budget-cutting knives. It was a sentiment shared by Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside), who serves on the Appropriations Committee.

“I am committed to heed the people’s mandate for a smaller government, for less taxes and less spending,” Packard said in a statement. “The budget the President proposed (Monday) does not even begin to take a sharp cut at bloated, wasteful government.”