Orange County approves $10.8B budget — but there's one giant question mark

Orange County leaders on Tuesday passed a $10.8 billion budget without much fanfare, but one big question looms large: how will the county settle hundreds of millions of dollars in claims related to the Airport Fire?

Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner told Spectrum News earlier this week that the county’s budget is “healthy” because of “robust” revenue from property taxes.

The new spending plan is up by around $1.2 billion from last year. This allows the county to backfill some of the budget shortfalls expected from the state and federal government, according to Wagner. Around 160 vacant positions have also been eliminated.

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But Wagner said county leaders are keeping a close eye on the bottom line “because there are some liabilities out there that are coming that we wanna make sure that we are prepared for.”

That will most certainly include the fallout from the fire last year in Trabuco Canyon that came to be called the Airport Fire. The fire was accidentally started by county employees working in dry, hot conditions. LAist was the first to report on public records that show workers failed to follow recommended best practices.

The blaze would claim 160 homes and other structures and injure 22 people.

The county is facing at least $400 million in liability claims related to the catastrophe.

Whether the county has set enough money aside to address those claims remains to be seen. The new budget allocates around $410 million toward its Property and Casualty Risk Internal Service fund — which manages all the liability claims against the county. In previous years, the amount allocated for the fund was around $43 million.

The county has already settled a handful of claims related to the fire to the tune of around $10 million.