ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : A Symbol, Please

The flap at Anaheim City Hall over new furniture clearly has generated more smoke than fire. Anaheim politics can be every bit as entertaining as a burst of fireworks over Disneyland on a summer’s night.

But there is a serious lesson here about the kinds of messages public officials send when the budget gets tight. Councilman Fred Hunter, a former mayor and rival of incumbent Tom Daly, objected to a $4,193 expenditure for four new chairs, a sofa, a table and a file cabinet in the office of his mayoral successor. And he quibbled over furniture costing $4,067 for Assistant City Manager David Morgan.

Daly says the furniture in his office was in such rough shape that a chair collapsed beneath a visitor. Morgan, recently promoted, says there was no furniture at all in the office he was given.

Hunter isn’t buying any of it, saying that he made do with the old furniture and that the city has surplus equipment that would serve at a time when the city is contemplating cuts to the Police and Fire departments.

Somewhere between having people sit on the floor and having them sink into lavish furnishings, there must be a middle ground. The offices may need new appointments, but Hunter put his finger on the symbolism.

Does an office in which a chair collapses need new furniture? Does an office with no furniture need some? The answer is yes in both cases. But with layoffs in the air, maybe there are ways of doing things cheaper, if only to signal that officials are doing their share of belt-tightening.