Orange County’s leaders are grappling with major budget problems after their outgoing CEO warned them they fell $75 million short of a self-balancing budget on Tuesday morning.
“Simply put, we have exhausted all resources available to us, but we are resilient,” Aguirre said. “You will see that we have no general fund requests for additional resources, because there are none to be given. Any cost increase must be offset with a corresponding reduction in the budget.”
To balance the budget, county staff are using one-time funds to help the county pay the bills, creating what’s known as a structural imbalance where the county’s annual revenues fall short of their expenditures, but they can still make ends meet by pulling from reserves and other one-time sources.
It’s not the first time the county has dipped into one time funds to balance the budget.
In the 2023-24 fiscal year they used $15 million, which increased the next year to another $44 million and an additional $53 million was used last year to make ends meet according to county Chief Financial Officer Kim Engelby.
“It is not enough to have a balanced budget,” Engelby said on Tuesday. “We want it to be structurally balanced, meaning that our ongoing costs are funded or offset by ongoing revenues.”
County staff noted the expenses were coming from a rising cost of doing business and a series of lawsuit settlements, the largest of which is the county’s Airport Fire.
[Read: It’s Not Just The Airport Fire: County Legal Payouts Total $258 Million Over Four Years]
So far, they’ve managed to avoid any layoffs through a hiring freeze and the elimination of over 400 vacant positions, according to Aguirre.
While Aguirre advertised that they asked most of their departments to make a 10% cut in their operations, most of them failed to hit that benchmark.
According to spokesperson Molly Nichelson, only the OC Registrar of Voters, Treasurer-Tax Collector, Office of Independent Review and Community Resources hit the 10% reduction benchmark.
Altogether, those departments represent about 2.5% of the county’s general fund, according to the budget.
The sheriff’s department, which receives more money from the county’s discretionary funds than any other department at 21% of the general fund, saw their net county costs increase by nearly $25 million this year according to the budget.
Treasurer Raises Complaints with Spending Cuts
Some of those cuts are setting off alarm bells among county leaders.
Treasurer and Tax Collector Shari Freidenrich, who was just overwhelmingly reelected to another four year term after supervisors took away her control of the county’s investment fund and questioned her work for a year, said the budget is damaging her department.
Freidenrich’s department is set to lose 15 of its 78 staff, a move she says would “ increase the risk of delays in treasury operations, financial reporting, reconciliations, tax administration, collections and other essential functions while increasing inefficiencies and costs.”
“I want the record to reflect that I have repeatedly advised County leadership that these reductions create substantial operational risks and will impair the ability of my office to perform legally mandated functions,” Freidenrich wrote in a Tuesday statement.
“If the Board elects to approve these reductions despite those warnings, it will do so with full notice of the concerns raised by the elected Treasurer-Tax Collector.”
Aguirre declined to comment on Freidenrich’s concerns.
Supervisors Largely Quiet on Budget Problems
While supervisors discussed the county budget on Tuesday, most of their discussion focused on smaller decisions, including what to do with $3.7 million recouped from the Andrew Do bribery scandal and the future of the Office of Independent review, which makes up .03% of the county budget.
Supervisor Katrina Foley noted that despite the problems they had on the horizon, she was proud of staff’s work to manage things effectively.
“Despite all these pressures, we are maintaining our fiscal reserves with two months of healthy reserves,” Foley said. “This budget, I think, reflects responsible choices, and I appreciate everything that everyone has done to keep us on a stable footing”
At the same time, Foley said they have to find out a way to keep services at a level residents expect and hold developers accountable to ensure they finish projects that will generate revenue on time.
“What we’re struggling with also highlights that we do need a real economic development plan for the County of Orange,” she said.
““I hope that we can move in that direction as we start to try to understand how can we generate more revenue for the county without burdening the taxpayers, and how do we continue to provide excellent service to the county.”
