Hearts, Heads Pulling O.C.’s Voters in Different Directions

Ken Aubel feels caught between a tax and a hard place.

The 39-year-old loan officer’s heart tells him that libraries, schools, police services and property values will suffer if Measure R, the proposed half-cent sales tax, is not approved by voters in a special election less than three weeks away.

But Aubel’s political and moral conscience is screaming something else. The thought of taxpayers voluntarily handing over more cash to the three members of the Board of Supervisors whom he blames for the county’s debacle in the first place is utterly repugnant, Aubel said.

Aubel and two other voters interviewed are part of an estimated 15% of voters who are undecided and whose ultimate decision could prove pivotal in the June 27 ballot.

“I’m kind of on the razor’s edge right now,” said Aubel, who is married and plans to start a family soon. “I don’t want to reward failed performance . . . but a lot of things people don’t see as well as our overall economy will be hurt” if the tax doesn’t pass.

For Aubel and wife Sylvia, the Measure R vote comes at a time when they will be looking to purchase a home, also. From a financial view, Aubel acknowledges it might be better if the measure passes. The estimated $130 million the tax would raise annually for 10 years would strengthen the county’s recession-weary economy, he says.

“I don’t want to buy [a home] in a declining market,” said Aubel, who regularly monitors the county’s bankruptcy by reading newspapers and watching television reports. “The economy in Orange County has been stabilizing too, and I wouldn’t like to see that threatened.”

While giving some credence to forecasts of a more gloomy economy if Measure R fails, Aubel doesn’t believe the election’s outcome will affect his lifestyle significantly. However, he realizes it might later.

“Either way, I don’t think it will have a major impact on my life, it will make some differences, but not big ones,” said Aubel. “But it bothers me about the schools. I have friends that have school-age kids and I was looking forward to sending my kids to an Orange County school.”

But Aubel’s moral outrage over the bond crisis is preventing him from voting for the measure. He regards a No vote as a just comeuppance for the county whose risky investment strategy created the crisis.

“They blew it, and now they want to get back in our pockets?” he said. “There’s a feeling of punishment at work here. These guys screwed up.”

At times, Aubel views the Measure R vote as a confrontation between innocent taxpayers and a bumbling and self-serving county politicians. And Aubel doesn’t want the taxpayers to blink first.

“This is the first vote we have to express ourselves since the bankruptcy,” he said. “I don’t want to send the wrong message.”

But, said Aubel, the immediate resignation of the three supervisors (Roger R. Stanton, Gaddi H. Vasquez and William G. Steiner) who rubber-stamped the county’s highly leveraged funds would persuade him to vote for the tax measure.

“I’d be a lot more amenable to giving the county new money if they cleaned house,” he added. “No one has even taken responsibility for this yet. There’s no leadership. It’s really scary.”

Cynthia Reilly

At first glance, Cynthia Reilly, 38, of Mission Viejo might appear to be the ideal profile of a Measure R supporter.

Her 8-year-old is a second-grade student at the local elementary school, where parents often have to pitch in to buy basic supplies for students. She and her husband knew the strain of lean financial times after he lost his job as a carpenter about four years ago. He returned to carpentry work in the last year.

Reilly earns extra income for the household as a preschool teacher. Though she works at a private school, Reilly understands the instant shortages that funding cutbacks would have on the public school classrooms.

Before becoming a teacher, she was employed by Merrill Lynch for nearly 10 years as an assistant stockbroker. There, she became familiar with the fundamentals of investment and realizes in a way probably few voters do the dire consequences of a county bond default.

“I’m very concerned about our bond ratings,” said Reilly. “A lot of people who haven’t worked in the investment industry don’t really understand what it will do in the long term, especially to our schools.”

But, as with Aubel, outrage is blocking Reilly’s Yes vote. She too believes ratifying the tax would unwisely let the county supervisors off the hook for their “gross mismanagement.”

“I’m angry that the supervisors might get the feeling that they can make mistakes and the taxpayers will bail them out,” she said. “In other words, they will feel like they can do whatever they want and not get spanked, that there won’t be any punishment.”

Deepening her resistance to approving the tax is her belief that predictions of the county’s imminent financial collapse without Measure R are exaggerated. She accuses county officials, particularly Chief Executive Officer William J. Popejoy, of deliberately frightening voters to drum up support for the tax measure.

“I think he’s taking what was happening before in the recession and scaring us a little bit more for effect,” said Reilly, who also doesn’t anticipate major changes in her lifestyle if the tax doesn’t win approval. “If we start losing teachers though, that would be horrible. But I don’t think that will happen. I think it’s a scare tactic.”

While she strongly believes Steiner, Vasquez and Stanton should be ousted, their departure alone would not be enough to win her vote.

The key to a Yes vote, she said, would be a clearer picture of how the money would be spent.

“If I knew an extra $200 were going to my son’s school or my city’s Police Department, I could approve of that,” said Reilly. “But with the half-cent sales tax, who knows where the money is going?”

If the electorate rejects Measure R and it throws the county into an even graver financial condition, Reilly said the voters can always reconsider the matter at another special election.

“I would have no trouble voting for it in the future,” she said. “But I have to know where the money is going.”

Marie Fennell

For months, no topic has sparked more debate than Measure R among Marie Fennell’s current events discussion group at the Huntington Landmark retirement community in Huntington Beach.

Supervisor Steiner even made a guest appearance to help promote the measure, but Fennell too remains undecided.

“Our group is made up of Republicans and Democrats, the far right and the far left, males and females and all very vocal people,” Fennell said. “Everyone keeps asking me how I feel and I keep going back and forth. I listened a great deal and am very concerned about it, trying to make up my mind.”

A part of Fennell, 72, wants badly to support a measure that will help restore the faith in the Orange County community. A retired county social worker and divorced mother of five grown sons who lives on a pension, Fennell moved to the county in 1960 from her native Boston and has no plans to leave.

What’s more, the county’s League of Women Voters has endorsed Measure R and Fennell, a “good, strong Democrat” respects the work and the recommendations of that organization.

But she’s still squarely on the fence.

“My first instinct was that we really need this measure to get out of this mess and reinstate some of the social programs that are being cut,” said Fennell, with a trace of a Boston accent. “Some of my best friends are being laid off and programs are being abolished. . . . I would vote for Measure R tomorrow if I thought those jobs and programs would be reinstated, but I don’t hear anyone saying that.”

Like Aubel and Reilly, if Fennell had solid answers about where the Measure R money would go, it would win her over, she said.

“If I thought the money would go directly to schools or welfare, I would have no problem voting for it,” said Fennell, whose sons are all products of Huntington Beach High School.

Another part of Fennell, however, dislikes any increases in a sales tax. Like many county Democrats, Fennell sees these taxes as regressive, hitting the poor much harder than the rich.

“Orange County is a rich county and people here tend to look at the world through rose-colored glasses,” she said. “They don’t see the homeless sleeping on the streets and the poor all around them who need help.”

Still, Fennell said two developments before the election might ultimately influence her to vote for the measure. The first would be the resignation of the three county supervisors whom she blames for the fiscal fiasco.

“If the supervisors were willing to step down and let someone else take over, it would go a long way to making this a tolerable situation for a lot of people,” Fennell said.

Second, a citizens oversight committee that would audit the Board of Supervisors should be elected, not appointed, Fennell suggested.

“Maybe each district could elect someone who would be responsible to us, not the board,” she said. “The Board of Supervisors have always been so far removed from the working people. It’s like they’re in another world.”