Fred Branca

As a youth in segregated North Carolina, Ron Coley recalls times he was chased home by white teen-agers hurling rocks. In college, he remembers being shunned by fellow students because of the color of his skin. But the 45-year-old analyst with the Orange County administrative office says the most stinging blow of racial discrimination came earlier this month.

In a closed session today, Orange County supervisors will discuss whether to fire the county's top administrator, whose performance has come under increasing criticism in the wake of the nation's largest municipal bankruptcy.

Orange County curtailed all but emergency spending Monday as its investors grappled with an expanding financial crisis that forced postponement of a major freeway widening, a near-shutdown of the county's largest water district and a halt to property tax refunds.

Six days after filing for bankruptcy in December, Orange County seized $73 million in restricted money due county bondholders and--perhaps illegally--placed it in the county's own depleted general fund, the California state auditor said Thursday. State Auditor Kurt R. Sjoberg, whose office is reviewing the county's books at the request of Gov. Pete Wilson, also questioned whether an additional $209 million should have been transferred into the county's general fund from other county funds.

A local attorney who for 15 years has held one of the county's most lucrative contracts for representing indigents accused of crimes has come under attack by some Orange County judges who charge that he has all but abandoned his role in the courtroom but continues to share in the contract profits. Court officials confirm that attorney William W.

With a single sweeping gesture in February, William J. Popejoy succeeded in blunting future criticism of his hot-seat role at the helm of Orange County--he offered to work for free. Since then, Popejoy, the chief executive officer charged with charting the bankrupt county's course toward recovery, has done plenty to make himself unpopular. He has bullied five reluctant supervisors into placing a tax increase before voters, a move most politicians see as akin to political suicide.