Keeping the County’s Luster in a Post-Bankruptcy World

After 1 1/2 years of unfavorable publicity, Orange County at last has seemed to be on the uptick. On Wednesday, the county declared an end to bankruptcy, and days earlier had made a successful $880-million bond offering to repay its debts.

Beyond lie longer-term concerns about services lost or unattended to. Residents must learn to do without some things, and some things that were supposed to get done will not. Keeping up the quality of life will challenge the imagination, resources and resolve of all citizens and government entities in the county.

One of the more prominent of the things that that will have to wait is the plan to reroute and widen a portion of Laguna Canyon Road. It has had hundreds of accidents during the 1990s already.

The delay is necessary because the county’s Environmental Management Agency will have more than $500 million diverted for bankruptcy recovery over the next 20 years. This is a way for the county to pay off the bonds that were issued to pay the creditors. This same revenue also was to have gone for flood control programs, redevelopment plans and recreation projects.

Regional parks will come up $80 million short because of money lost to the county’s Harbors Beaches and Parks Department. At the county’s Housing and Redevelopment Department, work on street lamps, sidewalks, gutters and sewers in 14 unincorporated areas is being curtailed.

In another instance, county officials say they are being forced to change their plans for the completion of the $45-million Antonio Parkway in South County. In unincorporated areas overall, plans will be adversely affected for the reduction of blight and attention to such problems as flooding from winter rains.

These are quality-of-life projects that are affected by the decision to avoid paying for bankruptcy recovery up front with a direct tax. It is important to recognize that this essentially has been a community-wide decision resulting from the overwhelming defeat of a sales tax ballot measure. All now must live with the consequences long after the anger has been vented about the causes of the fiscal collapse.

The question now before the county is what next: Does the region merely accept deteriorated services and facilities in certain areas of its common life and move on? Or should some effort be made to make improvements at the same time that expectations are scaled back?

The answer can be and should be the latter. But this raises an issue that goes to the heart of any philosophy of community and government in Orange County.

That is, while the county has a prevailing political notion that less government is always better, it still is necessary to reckon with how needed services are provided and paid for. It is not hard to find people who agree with the idea that big government spending is wasteful; the trick is to figure out how to pick up the slack so that the community retains its luster over time.

It is encouraging to see that there is some thought being given to this question already.

For example, Harbors Beaches and Parks is thinking about soliciting private donations and scaling back plans. That twin approach well might be a model for other unfinished county business.

Generating a sense of community involvement and commitment will be more important than ever in the post-bankruptcy world. The county has had a mixed record in support for charities and nonprofit organizations, which is one place to look for evidence of what might lie ahead. If giving hasn’t always been what it might be, private donors also have done wonderful things, such as building Orangewood, the home for abused and neglected children, and the Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

This is a county of sharp contrasts. It has multimillion-dollar homes, and beautiful beaches on the one hand and poverty on the other.

Some of the things that may not get done because the county went bust have to do with services and recreational facilities for the common person. How the county goes about shoring up and preserving our shared life in the years after bankruptcy will be both a yardstick of recovery and a test of character.