Grand Jury Indictments Show Folly of Looking for Scapegoats

* I am outraged at the criminal indictment of former Orange County Budget Director Ron Rubino by the Orange County Grand Jury. Ron Rubino’s only agenda was to serve the people of Orange County in the very best way possible. In the many years I worked with him, his defining characteristics were his integrity and honesty. He never had hidden agendas. He could be trusted to tell the truth. He brought intelligence, energy and principled leadership to every role in which he served. He would never knowingly do anything to harm the people of Orange County. That this good and decent man is now being offered up as a sacrificial lamb is nothing short of criminal.

BETTY SHAFFER

Tustin

* I worked with Ron Rubino in 1994 on an Industrial League initiative to obtain equity for Orange County in the distribution of tax funds by the state. We were attempting to attract resources to enable the county to continue essential services such as health care and child abuse services. I found him to be highly cooperative, hard-working, trustworthy, very loyal to the Board of Supervisors, and agree with his many co-workers who have gone on record with their very high regard for this dedicated public servant.

Rubino now stands accused--not of events leading to the bankruptcy or of personal gain--but of doing his job as budget director. The suggestion that he was involved in some underhanded deal is nonsense--the county’s 1994 increased interest income was reported on the front page of The Times.

I would hope that the district attorney will not drag his case out for another year before arriving at a conclusion, and will be ready with an apology as public as his accusation when the case is resolved in Rubino’s favor.

GREGORY BISHOP

Irvine

* The Orange County bankruptcy has been characterized by blame-shifting and finger-pointing, when attention should be called to the retrogressive public policies of the last two decades, which have led to this debacle. Such shortsighted actions, looking for scapegoats instead of causes, have finally landed on a genuine public servant, Supervisor William G. Steiner.

Although I support a different political party and do not always agree with his decisions on county matters, Steiner has brought a reasoned, competent and compassionate concern for the community to county governance. The crisis during his short period of service, stemming from the long-term focus on land exploitation by supervisors, should not make him the sacrifice to opportunistic political diversion and symbolic cleansing.

My decade of volunteer work to improve health-care services in Orange County demonstrated the entrenched power which has focused on the one-sided enrichment of the few. Proposition 13 started the downsizing of county responsibility and transferred costs to new home purchasers. Selling the county hospital in 1976 shuffled the health problems of the poor to the state education system via the UCI Medical Center. Acting as a “pass-through� of state funds without significant county sharing put Orange County at the bottom of all the counties in health-care support.

Increasing fines and fees, licenses and permits, and other charges to the public over the years was a kind of hidden taxation. The use of interest speculation through “derivatives� and other financial manipulations was an eagerly welcomed stopgap which postponed the day of reckoning, but it had to come!

CHAUNCEY A. ALEXANDER

Huntington Beach

* Re: “O.C. Grand Jury Accuses 4� (Dec 14): How can The Times state that none of those accused and/or indicted of misappropriation of funds profited personally? They were able to stay employed or reelected. Isn’t that a personal benefit? There are many unsuccessful election candidates who would think so. What’s amazing is that sometimes in large bureaucracies, the number and diligence of controls and checks seem to be inversely proportional to the magnitude of the amounts involved!

DAVID MELVOLD

Irvine

* Kudos to the departing grand jury for their actions, but much remains undone in response to the bankruptcy. The Securities and Exchange Commission has been investigating the actions of the cities, community college and school districts that borrowed to invest in the failed county pool. Has the grand jury’s investigation followed the same trail?

The focus seems to be nearly exclusively devoted to the hapless supervisors, while the actions of dozens of equally culpable elected officials have escaped scrutiny. Many of the officials charged with oversight of public funds may be simply incompetent for investing in the fund, but those who borrowed to make an arbitrage bet on the pool return are clearly as guilty of misconduct as the supervisors. Hopefully, I’m wrong and more will be held to account, or the next grand jury should take up where this one left off.

STEVE WHITE

Committees of Correspondence

Anaheim

* The grand jury’s decision to single out the remaining supervisors is all wrong. They had no more responsibility than the three who are no longer there. They had the courage to stay and keep our county running. I know Supervisor Steiner personally and I have the utmost respect for him--his integrity, his compassion and his intelligence. (I was on the committee that nominated him for Citizen of the Year in Orange and we scrutinized every facet of the man). The grand jury is just making scapegoats of two fine public servants.

JANE HENDERSON

Anaheim

* Well, the bankruptcy scapegoating continues.

The county’s elected decision makers scurry about, lobbing the ball from one to another and are now targeting Ron Rubino.

Rubino has a solid reputation for integrity and his contention that he had no knowledge that the interest earnings belonged to pool depositors other than the county should not be lightly dismissed.

In all fairness, the county should have the decency to provide Rubino with legal representation to effectively contest these charges. The dedicated, honest ex-budget director deserves no less.

JOE JACOBS

Laguna Beach