Obstructionist Supervisors

Orange County’s postwar years were a time of transformation, with agriculture and a near-rural atmosphere giving way to manufacturing, the growth of suburbs and an influx of people bound on enjoying a vibrant economy and good quality of life.

From the ‘50s through the ‘80s, the Board of Supervisors played a major role in planning, which often amounted to approving developer’s visions with only minor changes.

The supervisors’ writ ran large, with much of the county being unincorporated territory, under the direct governance of the five supervisors. Irvine became a city in 1971. Not until 1988 was another city created, Mission Viejo.

But the past dozen years have seen tens of thousands of residents opt for control closer to home. This year Rancho Santa Margarita became the 33rd city in Orange County. Of 2.7 million people in the county, fewer than 8% depend directly on the county for services such as sheriff’s patrols or street sweeping.

County supervisors still have broad countywide responsibilities, from housing to welfare to health. But in most cases, their function is to act as administrative agent of the state or federal government, passing on funds, rather than governing directly.

It should not be difficult to do the job well, but today on several key fronts, some of the current supervisors appear at odds on major issues with substantial parts of the community. In addition to the debacle over the planning for El Toro base reuse, there’s the fiasco of spending money from the settlement of lawsuits against tobacco companies.

The three supervisors who refused a sensible agreement with health care groups to spend 60% of the tobacco funds on health say they don’t want to set up new programs. They prefer that debts incurred after the 1994 bankruptcy be paid off and more jail space be constructed.

The gamble of this majority of three--Chairman Chuck Smith, Jim Silva and Cynthia P. Coad--will be tested if the coalition of health care organizations, Republican and Democratic legislators, senior citizens and others get their initiative on the November ballot. The initiative calls for spending 80% of the funds, now estimated to average $27 million per year for the next 25 years, on health.

The supervisors have threatened to short-circuit the initiative by pledging the money to Wall Street before November in return for funds to pay off the bankruptcy-related debt. Rather than playing a game of confrontational maneuvering, the supervisors should have reached agreement with health care advocates.

It has been nearly 30 years since the county turned over its public hospital to UC Irvine, promising to help keep the hospital running. It’s a broken promise, because the funding never reached the levels it should have.

Marian Bergeson, a former state senator, onetime Orange County supervisor and former aide to Gov. Pete Wilson, estimates that if the county were forced to run its own hospital it would cost the county $102 million a year to pay for charity and indigent care. Instead, a large part of that is paid for by doctors and hospitals.

Supervisors’ claims that the 60-40 split would cripple attempts to add new jail beds fell flat when a representative of Sheriff Mike Carona said the division of funds would be acceptable. It’s true the county needs jail beds; that’s been true for 25 years. It’s also true debt has to be paid down. That would save on interest payments. But the supervisors could have shown good faith by pledging to put the money saved into community clinics, drug addiction programs and stop-smoking classes. Instead, there were only vague nods in that direction.

That’s not enough for doctors, hospital administrators and other medical professionals used to being shortchanged by the county for years. It’s not surprising that they don’t trust the supervisors but instead want something in writing.

The supervisors’ claims that they need to do something more about adding jail beds would have been more persuasive had the board been more energized on the matter in the past quarter-century. Now it seems to be a convenient excuse.

With health care, the supervisors had a chance to take the proper action and also the popular one, judging by polls and the impressive list of backers of the proposed ballot measure.

The three supervisors who opposed the 60-40 split said they did not want to commit their successors to a rigid spending formula. But if the initiative passes and survives possible court challenges, they will have done just that.