Orange County slashes $1 billion, cuts sheriff and jail budgets

Orange County officials have approved a budget that stripped $1.2 billion -- about 405 positions -- from the county budget for the fiscal year that begins in July.

Coming off a year of declining tax revenue and increasing retirement costs, county supervisors on Tuesday pieced together a $5.5-billion budget -- down about 18% from last year.

In deliberations, county executives and elected officials were asked to take a 5% pay cut as part of the effort to save some cash.

Supervisors also slashed the district attorney's budget by about $8 million compared with last year's budget.

The Sheriff's Department was cut by $28 million, what Sheriff Sandra Hutchens called "unprecedented funding reductions."

She warned that the cuts would be tough on criminal investigators and cause problems for the jails.

Because of the cuts, Hutchens will have to eliminate about 50 positions and close one floor of the Women's Central Jail.

The Sheriff's Department is hoping to cut back on overtime pay to save costs further, spokesman John McDonald said.

-- My-Thuan Tran

Comments

[Marcus Williams]

The one thing this recession is going to prove is: At some point California elected officials are going to have to face the facts, that you cant keep footing the bill for Americans, and non Americans alike. It cost more money than the state and counties have.

Now is the time for citizens to pay attention to the voting record of each official, and vote accordingly next election.

NO, TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION.....

[Glenn]

So, if you spend too much money, then you should fire people, then you can keep on spending as much money as before, just with less people?
Why not just let all of the prisoners go and fire the entire prison system? Because that would be crazy, that's why.
Cut spending you fools! Cut back on the money you leak like a sieve!
Firing people is not a solution.

[mlimberg]

Hey Arnold, Sign the State over to Mexico, you are giving it to them one illegal at a time anyway....

[Fred Corron]

The solution is obvious: plow another $15 trillion into bankers ' gambling debts.

[Eitan]

"Orange County officials have approved a budget that stripped $1.2 billion -- about 405 positions..." - I don't know if journalists keep calculators handy, but this sentence would lead one to believe that each OC official earns $2.96 million on average each fiscal year. That's probably not the author's intention.

[LBCSurfgoddess]

Here we go again... They left out a slight oversight on the reserves in this story. The BoS does not want to cut into the 86 Million in reserves since it is meant to be used for tough economic times.

Huh???

[RON]

give it back to mexico everybody knows it is norter mexico

[MD Rackham]

Glenn:

You are aware the the single largest expense in government (outside of hardware-intensive federal departments like DOD and NASA) is people, right?

So if you want to "cut back on the money" then you very quickly run out of anything to cut other than people. Sure you might find someone abusing their expense account, but saving a few hundred (or thousand) dollars will do nothing to fill the budget gap we have, which is several million times larger than that.

Personally, if we want to look at home finances, I'd raise more money by getting a second (or third!) job before I started cutting family members, but that would bring up the subject of taxes, and too many Californians refuse to move beyond slogans and learn enough to understand the state's financial problems.

[sandiegan]

Big deal.

Based on about 3MM inhabitants...

That's $1835 per OCetian.

San Diego County, with about 3MM people as well, just passed budget at $1635 per citizen.

OC has a 12.2% higher county tax bite than San Diego.

Hah-hah!

[August]

The ILLEGALS will never be sent back; Can you REALLY see Arnold mowing his lawn & Maria vacuuming? I'm serious...

[jojo]

"Now is the time for citizens to pay attention to the voting record of each ...."

ya lost me bro....

[Luis]

"NO, TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION....."

Funny thing is we only take to the streets when a corporation wins [Lakers]? We are a bunch of cowards and would never take to the streets... Abortion [nope], slave wages [nope], bring back the draft [nope], repeal prop 13 [maybe but nah], gun control [nope], taxes [nope]. NOTHNING WILL GET YOU OUT ON THE STREETS. NOTHING.

Instead we sit back and watch...

It takes young Iranians to show us what the fight for freedom looks like [wtf]

Americans are a bunch of whinning cowards.