Bankruptcy Spawns Wealth of Blame, Ideas

After reading your Orange County Poll article “Tax Hikes Gaining Favor as a Way to Address Crisis” (Jan. 28), I was shocked to learn that Orange County residents are willing to bail out, at a minimum, incompetent elected officials. It’s time that elected officials be held accountable for their actions. It’s time that the county be run like a business.

When a private business makes an error of judgment causing a financial loss, everyone from the president to the lowest employee shoulders a portion of the responsibility. The solution often involves working overtime, cutting corners and reducing salaries and staff until they recover. Elected officials and public employees must be held to the same standards. We cannot allow them to think that every time they make an error they can reach into our pockets for a solution. This only sets the stage for future criminal or incompetent acts.

Before raising taxes, county assets should be sold. All county employees should be required to take pay cuts and possibly work longer hours. Many of their peers in the private sector suffered pay cuts and job losses during the difficult recession that is only now coming to an end. Why should government employees be any different?

Taxes should be raised only as a last resort to maintain current levels of education, police and fire services, but not before all other possibilities have been exhausted.

JILL SIEVERS

Mission Viejo

* Regarding bankruptcy, our supervisors’ persisting state of tax denial harms everyone except the lawyers.

Pretending to work on bankruptcy solutions, our supervisors dither between inadequate alternatives, thus creating the uncertainty which forces all parties to hire lawyers to litigate losses. Taxpayers may later pay these lawyers needless scores of millions.

It has long been clear that all parties must be paid and this will require all sources of savings and revenue. Yes, reduce the cost of county government, but that’s not enough nor quick enough. Recognize that borrowing anew while repudiating debts raises self-defeating interest rates. Supervisors must acknowledge what most now know: Temporary taxes are needed too.

Supervisors drifting in denial do the greatest harm; citizens lose big when county credit is damaged and lawyers get all the money.

JOHN CAZIER

Corona del Mar

* Laying off county employees is not the answer.

I am sure most Orange County residents would gladly agree to a sales tax increase of one-half cent for however long it takes to recover from the county investment losses with the proviso that, when the budget is back on track, the sales tax will be lowered from its present 7.75% level to 7.25% for the period of time required to reimburse the residents for their generosity.

The witch hunt must stop.

J.O. IRELAND

Laguna Beach

* Maybe the supervisors’ game is to let things continue to drift and deteriorate until a desperate citizenry pleads with them to raise taxes. Then they can say they were forced to do it, and thereby save their endangered skins.

PHROSO SMITH

Yorba Linda

* A large number of my friends and co-workers have, over the last few years, been given the choice of moving to some faraway locale or losing their jobs. Some have just plain gotten sacked. So reading The Times’ daily cheerleading for a tax hike to preserve the jobs of Orange County employees makes me sick. Let the county employees deal with it the way the rest of us have: by moving or finding other jobs.

ROBERT McMILLIN

Garden Grove

* It is about time someone asked the questions on everyone’s mind about the culpability of the Board of Supervisors, on whose watch the bankruptcy occurred, captains of the proverbial ship notwithstanding.

It is easier to point fingers, attempt to hold onto their political empire (?) and take it out on the backs of the employees. How much angrier will the electorate be as services it is still paying for decrease or disappear under the micro-management of this board? Where is the collective wrath of the citizens? This board has no boss other than you and me.

GLADYS LORENZO

Huntington Beach

* As I read your articles on Orange County’s bankruptcy, I recall some of your earlier stories dealing with why Orange County and the schools invested in the county’s investment pool in the first place--a shortage of money.

We also know that the state has taken roughly 40% of local revenue and, further, mandated expenditures. (Supervisor) Marian Bergeson has made some challenges to mandates, but why should the county not act boldly? This debacle could be seen as a nationally important opportunity.

Why doesn’t the county opt for being a test case to see how our economy and people would live if we dump the mandates, have major cutbacks in all welfare and entitlement programs, pay for our schools with local funds? And, even more boldly, let’s be like the Dutch and either legalize or not enforce laws on prostitution and drugs.

If minimum wages were eliminated, workers’ compensation insurance and Social Security optional, and property taxes stayed in each community, we would have disparity but excellence in much of our education and an economic boom. If people didn’t like the Orange County free market, they could move to Los Angeles or San Diego.

Also, why pander to the investment bankers on Wall Street with paying back our bonds? Why not contact some banks (foreign perhaps) to get some credit lines?

BRUCE T. BIRKETT

Laguna Beach

* Thanks to the Orange County Business Council, the investment community and the League of Women Voters, some refreshing alternatives to alleviate the Orange County financial crisis are being aired. The supervisors have remained with their heads in the sand too long. They and the public must realize first that the county general fund was augmented by the interest gained from the infamous investment pool. That income no longer exists. The county, including not only our elected supervisors but also those of us who elected them, must share the responsibility for reimbursing those funds.

If Orange County is to be fiscally respectable, revenue must be increased in a responsible way to provide for both current and future needs. No alternative, including raising taxes, should be ruled out.

JEAN RAUN

Laguna Beach

* So bailing out Mexico is OK, but Orange County can forget about getting any help from either the feds or the state. Instead we are going to see cutbacks on services and increased taxes.

How can they increase my taxes? I’m already paying nearly $300 a month in combined property and Mello-Roos taxes and have to pay nearly 8% on every purchase that isn’t exempt from the sales tax. Both my wife and I work full time, and our debt and stress only seem to mount as our property values fall.

How about a few billion dollars for Orange County’s ongoing crisis? I guarantee that more dollars will make it into the Mexican economy that way. A healthy Orange County means plenty of dollars being sent home to Mexico. Meanwhile, the feds won’t even pay their fair share of the cost of illegal immigrants.

It seems like we can’t win, regardless of who is in power.

RICH HOLLAND

Aliso Viejo