COUNTYWIDE : Board Hears Dire Budget Predictions

County supervisors began what promises to be a tough season of budget negotiations Tuesday as they received a briefing full of dire predictions about the county’s financial position.

“It is likely that the board will be faced with service reductions,” said Ronald S. Rubino, the county’s budget director, “and possibly even closing some programs.”

Rubino and other county officials have warned that the recession, growing demand for local services, and cutbacks in state and federal assistance have created the largest projected deficit in the county’s history. Current estimates put this year’s budget shortfall at about $65 million.

By law, the county must balance its budget every year.

Rubino outlined those issues for the board Tuesday as part of its annual budget process. Board members sat stonily as they listened to his litany of bad news.

“I’m glad you’re concluding,” Board Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez said as Rubino reached the end of his comments, “because if it were any worse, I’d just be ready to hang it up.”

As they enter their budget hearings, county supervisors must address an array of issues. And at the same time they fight to preserve county services at current levels, they are facing several big-ticket items that county government considers high-priority.

The Theo Lacy Branch Jail expansion, for instance, would deliver badly needed jail beds to a county facing a jail overcrowding crisis. But no money is in the budget to pay for that expansion, so other programs would have to be cut to make room for it.

One area in which the county hopes to raise money is by selling Rancho del Rio, a 213-acre ranch seized in a 1985 drug raid. That sale is scheduled for next week, but the U.S. attorney for California’s Central District has raised objections to the sale, arguing that it would violate a contract between the county and the federal government.

U.S. Atty. Lourdes G. Baird wrote to county officials on May 28 to express the federal government’s objections to the sale. County and federal lawyers have since met to discuss the protests, and the supervisors voted Tuesday to approve a resolution that they hope will settle the matter.