ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : County Leaders Take More Assembly Flak : Bailout: Impatient panel scorns officials for lack of remorse and shortchanging poor, and gets abject apologies.

Orange County officials made their bankruptcy recovery pitch to state lawmakers again on Wednesday but were battered for failing to demonstrate sufficient remorse about the debacle and buffeted by criticism that their plans would hurt the poor and skirt environmental laws.

County leaders responded by offering apologies during a two-hour hearing of the Assembly select committee that is reviewing the bankruptcy and would be the likely source for any bailout legislation.

Assemblyman Kevin Murray (D-Los Angeles) said county officials seemed to be avoiding “whatever responsibility” they had for the crisis.

“I need at least some show of remorse,” Murray told them, “some acknowledgment that you guys made a tiny mistake.”

Several Orange County officials who attended the hearing--among them Supervisor Marian Bergeson, county Chief Executive Officer William J. Popejoy and Sheriff Brad Gates--all suggested that remorse is hardly in short supply.

“I wish we would have had a little more wisdom to be able to see what was going on,” Gates responded to the members of the Assembly Select Committee on the Insolvency of Orange County. “I’m one elected official in Orange County who’s not afraid to say we made a tremendous mistake.”

County officials also said they will need legislative help on a variety of fronts by May 1 to skirt insolvency. But they provided few details on several important issues, including the county proposal to have the state provide loan guarantees for $236 million in “recovery notes.”

Bruce Bennett, the county’s bankruptcy attorney, said Orange County is pursuing “private market solutions” and that any recovery notes guaranteed by the state would have a “super priority” for repayment. “If I were permitted to, I’d buy them,” he said.

After the hearing, several lawmakers were left scratching their heads, saying that time is running short for the county if it intends to get legislative help.

“It’s still not completely clear what all their proposals are,” Assemblywoman Marguerite Archie-Hudson (D-Los Angeles), the committee’s chairwoman, said after the hearing. “Right now, we’re waiting on Orange County. Our timetable depends on Orange County’s timetable.”

Meanwhile, Senate officials said it was unlikely any of the Orange County bills would be signed into law by the beginning of May.

“The reality is that’s not going to happen,” said Scott Johnson, chief counsel to the Senate Special Committee on Local Government Finance, which is also reviewing the Orange County crisis. “Some of these bills aren’t even introduced yet. May 1 just isn’t realistic.”

Lawmakers on the Assembly panel also expressed concern that Orange County’s recovery efforts threaten to disproportionately hurt the poor. Murray said the recovery plans have no safeguards to ensure important social services and health care programs are “propped up.”

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) said cutbacks in Orange County’s social programs could cause its welfare recipients to simply relocate elsewhere in the state.

“Everyone talks about the ripple effect in the bond market,” Katz said. “There’s a potential ripple effect on the human front that would hurt surrounding counties.”

Katz also raised concern that the Orange County Board of Supervisors retains three of the five members who were in office when the county lost $1.7 billion in investments last year and declared bankruptcy.

“If you arrest someone who embezzled a whole bunch of money from a bank, he’s the last person you’re going to put back in charge of the bank,” Katz said. “That is the concern we hear pressed up here, that money going in is still being controlled by three-fifths of the folks who allowed this thing to happen.”

Assemblyman Byron D. Sher (D-Palo Alto) said he would oppose the county’s effort to avoid state environmental reviews, a key component of the county plan to begin trucking in trash from neighboring counties to raise extra revenue for bankruptcy recovery efforts.

Sher said the exemption would set a “bad precedent” and strip citizens in neighborhoods surrounding the county landfills of any chance to critique or alter the proposal. He disagreed with an assessment by county officials that the reviews would be time consuming, saying they could be conducted quickly if the proposal posed no harm to the environment.

County officials said that since many of the same trash trucks already roll through the county to reach dumps in Los Angeles County, they might as well pull off, dump loads and generate extra cash.