Tough Talk in Stanton’s ‘State of County’ Speech : Supervisors: New chairman wants to work judges on weekends, fingerprint welfare recipients and cut vacant jobs.

In a wide-ranging plan for battling the county’s problems, new Board of Supervisors Chairman Roger R. Stanton said Tuesday that he wants to have judges work weekends and require some local welfare recipients to be fingerprinted to avoid “double-dipping.”

In his “state of the county” address, Stanton also directed county staff to explore ways to cut many of the county’s now-vacant 1,700 jobs and restructure several offices and services.

Some of the chairman’s ideas appear sure to spark opposition during the coming months. But Stanton said such broad measures are demanded by the unprecedented financial crunch now facing Orange County.

“It was a tough speech for tough times,” said fellow Supervisor Don R. Roth.

Stanton laced his talk with references to British leader Winston Churchill, military hero Gen. George S. Patton, Olympic organizer Peter Ueberroth and businessman Sam Walton as he talked of “rallying” the county.

“There is no one--no one--on or off the county payroll who is going to have 100% of their county requests met,” Stanton said. “Time and circumstance require that we do more for our public with less, that we do it a little better and even a little faster.”

The county already faces a potential budget shortfall of more than $60 million. And with Gov. Pete Wilson proposing last week that the state cut its funding for courts, welfare and other services even further than past years, the shortfall could grow sharply.

In response, Stanton outlined a laundry list of possible ways of saving money.

Some of the ideas are new, while others have been discussed in varying forms before. “We’ve been dancing on the border of some of these issues,” said Roth, “and now it’s time to look at them in earnest.”

Among the proposals which Stanton directed county staff to review:

* Eliminating a “substantial portion” of the 1,700 positions--or 10% of the county work force--that are now vacant in part because of a hiring freeze over the past year.

Eliminating some of those positions would save the county an average of $50,000 per job annually in salary and benefits, County Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider said.

County union officials said that while the idea is preferable to layoffs of current employees, it is still cause for concern.

“We obviously would like to have our positions filled,” said Richard Munoz, business agent of the Service Employees International Union 787, which represents about 600 county employees. “If they want to cut the fat off the pig, they should start at the top--with management.”

* Reorganizing the county Agriculture Commissioner’s Department and absorbing it into the Environmental Management Agency.

The 48-person department, which has an annual budget of about $2.3 million, regulates the use of chemicals by growers and played a key role in the response to the Mediterranean fruit fly infestation in Orange County in 1990. Absorbing it into the Environmental Management Agency could reduce personnel and open the department’s Anaheim offices for money-making uses, county officials said.

“This came as a bit of a surprise to us,” Frank Parsons, deputy agricultural commissioner, said of the proposal. “We’ll just have to wait and see what direction we get.”

* Saving space in the county’s overcrowded jail facilities by setting up booking and detention centers in cities and having judges work Friday nights and weekends. That could alleviate the problem of having inmates in jail over the weekend waiting for Monday arraignments.

In the past, some judges have resisted the idea of weekend duty. But Superior Court Presiding Judge Donald W. Smallwood, who attended the talk, said: “We’re certainly going to take a hard look at these proposals.”

* Turning legal representation of some indigent criminal defendants over to a panel of private attorneys.

* Attacking government fraud on two fronts by looking at ways to reduce the county’s costs for workers’ compensation claims and by fingerprinting General Relief welfare recipients.

Los Angeles County enraged some civil libertarians last year by becoming the first government entity in the nation to use fingerprinting to catch “double-dipping” welfare recipients using aliases to collect checks. In its first four months, the $9.6-million program caught only two cheaters, officials said.

County staff is to begin reporting back to Stanton on some of these proposals within two weeks.

“We heard him loud and clear,” said county Budget Director Ronald S. Rubino, “and we’re already starting on it, so it’s full steam ahead. . . . It’s going to be a very grueling process.”