ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : $450,000 Now?

Orange County supervisors have authorized spending up to $450,000 for a management audit when the county is bankrupt. That’s a mistake.

It is true that the county needs a blueprint to get out of its mess and to guide its operations when it attains level ground, but is it really necessary to lay out this much for such a purpose in a time of fiscal desperation? Maybe there are qualified individuals or firms willing to give the county a cut rate for the job, or no rate at all. After all, William J. Popejoy has agreed to serve as the county’s chief executive officer for up to nine months without pay. There might be others willing to follow his example.

The Board of Supervisors has appointed an 18-member committee to oversee the audit--too large a committee to be expected to accomplish much. Also, nearly all the panel members have close links to the county. Only after complaints about an “old boys’ network” were raised were two outsiders added.

There has been criticism that the committee’s chairman, Bruce Nestande, accepted $40,000 from Wall Street firms while he was an Orange County supervisor and while he was running unsuccessfully for secretary of state in 1986. No one says Nestande did anything wrong, but given the questions about the involvement of securities firms in transactions leading to the county’s bankruptcy, someone else would have been preferable.

Throwing money around and relying on the same old faces will not restore county residents’ confidence in government.