SANTA ANA — To hear county supervisors and city council members talk in these dark budget days is to hear a tale that portrays Gov. Pete Wilson as the driver of a runaway Brink's truck.

With the assistance of strong rhetoric, the local version of the story implies that the governor, himself, would stop in Orange and the other California counties under the cover of darkness, scoop up piles of property tax money and speed back to Sacramento to plug state government's massive budget shortfall.

It is indeed a story that adds to the political intrigue and one that plays well locally in this season of fiscal blame.

On Tuesday, when Orange County supervisors meet to adopt a preliminary budget for the 1993-94 fiscal year, the discussion is bound to return to how the $80 million in proposed cuts to health care, fire protection and law enforcement service was necessitated by raiders from Sacramento.

Those numbers could rise dramatically as early as tonight when the Legislature meets to consider a plan that could shift more than $120 million from the county's treasury.

Among the $80 million in cuts already proposed is a reduction of library hours by 44%, the closure of two fire stations and the loss of at least 450 county jobs.

But this long-running story has lost some crucial elements in months of translation, as if passed in conversation down a large family's dinner table.

What is true is that Wilson and the Legislature are considering plans that would take millions in local property tax revenue from the county to help the state meet its obligation to fund the California public school system.

Commonly referred to as the "shift," the county and its board-governed special districts--under the most conservative of plans--would transfer about $60 million to the public school system.

Contrary to the tales that would have villainous state officials using the county's cash to pay for programs in Ojai or Norwalk, none of it would ever leave Orange County. All of the money, according to the budget plans under consideration, would finance local public school programs.

Yet, it is an element of an incredibly confusing system that tends to be among the least understood by residents whose tax money is doing the moving, state and county officials say.

In the simplest of terms, the various funding formulas have reduced government budget-balancing to a shell game, with the governor and the Legislature making the rules.