COLUMBIANA CO. Another wait for officials to fill jobs?

A first-quarter 2004 budget is likely to be proposed in coming weeks.
By NORMAN LEIGH
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
LISBON -- Columbiana County commissioners are telling department heads it may be 2005 before their offices can get more money to hire employees.
Commissioners recently concluded their annual budget hearings for the 2004 county spending plan.
During the meetings, several department heads said they need to hire people to fill long-standing vacancies created through retirements or for other reasons, Commissioner Sean Logan said Tuesday.
Commissioners have no direct say in hiring matters, but they do control departmental purse strings by deciding whether to grant funding requests.
If additional money to hire personnel isn't granted, county departments will have to find the funds somewhere else within their budgets or postpone hiring.
"We're going to have to ask them to hold the line on hiring," Logan said.
Those departments seeking additional money to fill job vacancies include the data processing, prosecutor's and auditor's offices.
Financial troubles
Logan said the county is still trying to recover from a funding crisis in 2001 and 2002.
Commissioners imposed a 0.5 percent increase in the county sales tax in June 2002 to deal with the revenue scarcity that produced the fiscal woes.
With the help of the nearly $3 million in additional revenue produced annually by the imposed tax, the county is beginning to recover and is paying off debt.
It will be a while, though, before a full recovery can be declared, Logan added.
For 2004, commissioners are considering an across-the-board reduction in departmental spending requests to ensure a balanced spending plan for next year, Logan said.
Amount to trim
Preliminary 2004 budget requests totaled about $18.5 million. Commissioners estimate the county will have about $17.8 million in revenue next year, which means $700,000 needs to be pared.
Commissioners have yet to decide by what percentage spending requests will be reduced, Logan said.
For the third consecutive year, commissioners are likely to adopt a first-quarter budget.
The short-term spending plan will allow county officials time in early 2004 to determine their cash carry-over from 2003 and to more precisely determine the amount of sales-tax revenue from the last part of this year.
A budget for the remainder of 2004 will be adopted sometime in the first three months of next year.
leigh@vindy.com