ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : Steiner Is Second Supervisor to Say He’ll Vote for Measure R

In the afterglow of the day’s legislative victory in Sacramento, Supervisor William G. Steiner on Thursday announced he would personally vote for Measure R on June 27.

Steiner joins colleague Marian Bergeson as the second board member to come out for the half-cent sales tax increase. Supervisor Jim Silva last week said that he opposes it.

While Bergeson is actively speaking for its passage, Steiner restated his previous position on campaigning for the measure, saying he will do so only if city, school and special district officials show support for it.

Discussing the county bankruptcy and the dismal job in the past few months of overseeing the dismantling of many county services, Steiner spoke forcefully about his frustration with local officials who have yet to take a stand on the tax increase or even to say that “it should be on the ballot.”

“They are missing in action and these are the entities that have the most at stake,” he said. The tax is critical if these local agencies are to receive more than 90 cents back for every dollar they had invested in the failed county bond pool, he said, “but none of these locally elected officials want to risk their office.”

Steiner, who before being appointed in 1993 to the board by Gov. Pete Wilson was a well-known advocate for abused children, has been troubled by the bankruptcy’s effect on social, health and other services. He also has been torn by his previously neutral stand on Measure R; he had declined in recent weeks to say how he would vote.

“We need all of these strategies: Measure R and the legislative package,” Steiner said when asked Thursday about Statehouse approval of the county recovery package. “Measure R is part of the solution.”

Steiner said “leadership generally is convincing people to do the unpopular thing,” not reading polls and doing what is expedient.

But he expressed frustration that the post-bankruptcy Board of Supervisors “doesn’t have the credibility with people to persuade” swing voters who are needed to pass the tax.

“I thought I provided leadership simply by putting it on the ballot,” said Steiner, noting that he was the first of the supervisors to vow to do that. Neither Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez nor Roger R. Stanton have taken a position on Measure R, though all the supervisors voted in March to put it before the voters.

“I’m going to vote for Measure R,” said Steiner, but “the success or failure of Measure R is linked to communitywide, grass-roots support for it. . . . Local officials are in the best position to campaign for Measure R, and it is in their self-interest to do so if they want 100 cents on the dollar.”

Steiner, who was elected overwhelmingly to a full term last year, said he joined the board “as a bully pulpit for kids, not to be skinned alive.”

“I do a lot of soul-searching about whether it is better to go back to my field,” he said. “I am not looking to satisfy my ego or blind ambition as a county supervisor. I want to see this (crisis) through. I just got reelected, and want see this through.”