SANTA ANA — More than 400 Orange County workers will lose their jobs and nearly 300 other positions will be eliminated under budget-cutting proposals unveiled Tuesday in what officials say is the beginning of a massive effort to shrink government in the face of bankruptcy.
"This has been a death in the family called Orange County," said Sheriff Brad Gates, whose own department must cut 129 full- and part-time jobs, along with giving up such items as 98 phones, six fax machines, 10 cellular phones and bottled water deliveries, and limiting jail inmates to coffee with breakfast only.
"This has not been a comfortable situation for us. This has been emotionally draining."
The layoffs, forced retirements and elimination of open jobs--along with cuts in contract services, training, travel, supplies and leases--are expected to save the county $42 million over the next six months. But officials concede they are just a fraction of the cuts that will be needed to make up for a $172-million projected shortfall in the budget year ending June 30.
Most of the layoffs--102 of which previously had been reported--will come from the county's general services agency, health care agency, sheriff's department, county administrative office and auditor-controller's office.
Shortly before the scope of the cuts was announced, more than a dozen angry laid-off employees lashed out at the Board of Supervisors, saying they could not pay their mortgages and support their children. There have been claims of discrimination and favoritism as the layoffs began sweeping through the ranks of county workers.
"I had no responsibility in these financial decisions, so it does not seem fair that I am now being punished," said Manucheh Yazdi, 62, a research analyst in the county administrative office who was fired after 14 years of employment.
Yazdi said he put his Irvine home on the market last week, cannot make his car payments and cannot afford health insurance for his wife, who had been covered under Yazdi's county health plan.
Still, in his State of the County address, Board of Supervisors Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez tried to sound optimistic about the county's fiscal future.
"I have full confidence that we will regain our financial footing," Vasquez said. "We will re-emerge a stronger Orange County. We will learn the bitter lessons of this experience and make changes."
As budget cuts were detailed Tuesday:
