LAWRENCE COUNTY Board delays budget

Commissioners cannot raise taxes this year because of countywide reassessment.
By LAURE CIOFFI
VINDICATOR NEW CASTLE BUREAU
NEW CASTLE, Pa. -- Some last-minute calculating is going into Lawrence County's 2003 budget, set to be introduced sometime today.
County commissioners had hoped to introduce the budget at Tuesday's regular meeting, but the figures were not ready yet, they said. Commissioners recessed their regular meeting until the call of the chairman sometime today.
County officials say they are working to eliminate a deficit that is partly caused by countywide reassessment.
Can't raise taxes
State law prohibits any county from raising real estate taxes when countywide reassessment is being instituted. The only extra income the county can generate is a five percent windfall that can come from the change in property assessments.
But that amount wasn't nearly enough to cover the just under $2 million the county was searching for last week to balance the 2003 budget, said Commissioner Brian Burick.
County Chief Clerk Charleen Micco said last week that the biggest increases in the budget came from the county jail and increases in health care and liability insurance.
Micco said insurance costs went up anywhere from 15 to 20 percent over last year. Initial budget figures had shown that the county jail would need an extra $1.1 million to operate in the coming year also.
Burick said Tuesday that the jail budget, which is part of the overall county budget, was decreased by about $500,000 because of a projected revenue increase and cuts.
Burick, who is president of the county prison board, said the county courts and district attorney have agreed to use house arrest more frequently for nonviolent offenders, which will free up beds for out of county inmates. The county collects $55 per day, per inmate from other counties who house inmates at the jail.
Other cuts
They were also able to make cuts in training costs for correction officers, changes in payment for substitute personnel and reduce grocery costs.
Burick added that the county expects to have at least 30 beds per day available to other counties for housing inmates in the next year. Lawrence County's own prison population had increased in the last year and less than half that amount of beds were open to revenue-generating out-of-county inmates, he said.
Commissioner Ed Fosnaught, who was president of the prison board until last summer, criticized the decrease in revenue from the jail. He said filling 30 beds with out-of-county prisoners was not enough.
"I urge the prison board to make every effort to fill every bed," he said. The decline in out-of-county prisoners started well before Fosnaught resigned as prison board president and continued until recently.
Burick noted that housing prisoners from other counties is only a temporary solution to the jail revenue problem. He noted that Mercer and Butler counties, where most of the out-of-county prisoners are coming from, are building new jails and will no longer need Lawrence County in a few years.
No long-term solutions have been discussed, he said.