ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : Board Seeks Ideas on Privatizing Environmental Agency : Downsizing: It would be first authority in private hands. Critics say it would cause much pain but wouldn’t save much money.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to begin seeking proposals to privatize the Environmental Management Agency, which handles a variety of services from maintaining beaches to overseeing flood control and low-income housing.

If the plan moves forward, it could mark the first time in county history that an entire authority would be placed in private hands.

The proposal by Supervisor Roger R. Stanton received unanimous board support, but several public speakers complained that the move could put cause widespread layoffs and jeopardize the delivery of the critical services by handing them over to private, money-making interests.

“It’s not the fox guarding the henhouse; it’s a pack of wolves running rampant,” said Mike Reetz, an EMA supervising inspector, who also complained that morale sank to a new low after workers learned of the proposal.

Board members tried to ease fears by insisting the county would retain policy control over private contracts, and said the county wants to ensure that EMA’s “top-notch professionals” would be first in line for jobs contracted out.

“Changing times require changing responses . . . to how we do business,” said Stanton, stressing that the county was only looking at its options and had not decided whether to go forward with the plan.

The proposal comes at a time when the bankrupt county is looking for ways to downsize government and provide services as cheaply and efficiently as possible.

EMA Director Michael M. Ruane and other agency officials declined to discuss the proposal. But others questioned whether such a large privatization might be better aimed at other county agencies.

“Certainly, EMA has been one of the county agencies that has been most receptive to contracting out services,” said Robert W. Poole Jr. of the Reason Foundation, a Libertarian think tank that has encouraged supervisors to sell assets and privatize services. “I’m not sure how much more potential there is for saving at EMA.”

EMA’s 1994-95 budget is $745 million, 70% of which already goes to contract services, according to agency figures. EMA operations also are largely funded by state and federal money, and service fees; only about $2.5 million of the current budget came from the county’s general fund, said Gil Scofield, EMA manager of fiscal and management services.

The county’s bankruptcy and EMA’s own downsizing efforts will reduce employee positions from 1,341 this fiscal year to 1,275 next year.

The EMA performs a number of critical services, including planning, land management and overseeing low-income housing efforts. Its varied obligations in some ways might make it easier to farm EMA jobs out to private contracts, but others say privatization will relinquish needed government oversight.