Red Ink Blues

Will bankruptcy force Orange County to act like Orange County?

Harold Johnson from the March 1995 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

The dirty little secret, you see, is that Orange County's reputation as a free-enterprise, small-government citadel simply isn't borne out when you look at local government. Yes, voters send stalwarts of the right to Sacramento and to Congress; the legislative delegation has been derided--or hailed--as the capital's "cavemen," while congressional representatives include such give-no-quarter conservatives as Bob Dornan, Dana Rohrabacher, Chris Cox, Ed Royce, and, until recently, William Dannemeyer. But it's a different story with the people who tend the political hearthfires back home. While practically everyone answers to the name Republican, that's rather like a Brit identifying himself as "Church of England": The tent is more sprawling than Ringling Brothers' and, for that reason, more of a circus.

The divide in the GOP between aggressive skeptics of big government and status-quo huggers is writ large in this most Republican of counties. Many local or county elected officials would make comfy chums for Bill or Hillary or other cheerleaders for government growth. At the very least they regard George Bush's benevolent attitude toward taxes and regulations as the very model of good governance. Outgoing GOP County Supervisor Harriett Wieder actually endorsed Clinton, while her colleague Tom Riley has backed a stream of liberal primary opponents to right-wing legislators and congressmen. Wieder, Riley, and the rest of the supes gave Citron their high fives during his re-election race last June, while the county's legislative and congressional delegations got behind Republican challenger John Moorlach, a CPA who warned that the treasurer's investment bubble was about to pop.

In part, the county's political schizophrenia is a reflection of the kind of people who, in any community, are most drawn toward local office--those who believe in government and yearn to sit at the control board. But public ignorance and apathy play a large role, too. While Dornan and Dannemeyer are household names, 56 percent of residents couldn't identify a single county leader, according to a recent poll.

The large silver lining in the financial fiasco is that it is prodding people out of slumber. County officials who have been able to operate underneath the radar suddenly find themselves, and their managerial deficiencies, bathed in klieg lights. The scope of the fiscal dilemma--a $2 billion loss in the investment fund's value, translating into an operating deficit of at least $170 million this year--also offers a wonderful opportunity for the county finally to square its reality with its reputation, by serving Ultra Slim Fast to government bureaucracies.

With a popular groundswell of opposition to any new taxes, and talk of recall in the air, nervous supervisors show unaccustomed interest in strategies for dieting, devolving, contracting out. Payroll cuts are already under way. There's even talk that the county's airport--named for the celluloid saint of rugged individualism, John Wayne--might be sold or leased.

The Lincoln Club, an influential group of GOP donors, has commissioned the Reason Foundation's Robert Poole to do a top-to-bottom review and offer a blueprint for a reinvented county government. "Orange County has the chance to be a test tube for the 21st-century model of a rationalized, downsized public sector," says Lincoln Club member Howard Klein.

The forces of inertia, of course, haven't been routed, but the potential for a change is greater than any time in memory. And the battle charge has a stirring ring: At long last, let Orange County be Orange County.

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