ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : A Welcome Plan, With All Its Flaws

Not everybody was happy with the recovery plan that Orange County officials presented last week, but its delivery makes it incumbent on those who find fault to come up with something better.

It is important to remember that this is a $2-billion problem, and amid whatever disappointment there was, there also were signals that such a plan is what Wall Street is looking for to restore confidence in Orange County.

The plan is indeed fragile, as even its supporters acknowledge. But getting everybody from Sacramento to local city halls behind this proposal, or something like it, will go a long way toward buttoning down a plan of recovery.

Let’s begin with the state’s role. In recent months, legislators have done a lot of lecturing about the need for Orange County to absorb the pain locally. Much of this rhetoric has been appropriate to awaken a fiscally conservative county to the need to make the tough choices itself, even to impose new recovery taxes. But having a plan in place changes all that.

What the county now wants from the state is an assurance of loan guarantees to back recovery notes given to schools and cities as part of a sweeping package of proposals. The county is poised to do what the state says has been needed; it has announced Draconian cuts in personnel and services. If the Board of Supervisors does the right thing, voters will be asked to approve a half-cent sales tax.

In view of these tough choices, it was encouraging that state Sen. Lucy Killea (I-San Diego), co-chair of the Senate panel investigating the bankruptcy, characterized the plan in positive terms. It is difficult to know what to make of the concern of state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) that this plan constitutes unwarranted help for Orange County. In combining a tax plan with severe cuts, the county is doing everything it reasonably can be expected to do. It’s time to end posturing and begin financial and moral support.

There are concerns at the local level about higher trash fees, which deserve to be heard out. Maybe there is room for negotiation here, but it seems clear from earlier discussions about how to resolve the bankruptcy that any recovery plan is likely to include changes in the area of garbage collection.

The bottom line is that there is no painless way out of this crisis. The alternative to a recovery that hurts is to have schools and services deteriorate, to have housing values go down and for quality of life to slip.

Nobody said this would be easy. However a recovery plan is structured, everyone--from the Legislature to local schools and municipalities--eventually must get on board.