MAHONING COUNTY Ballot recount cost would fall to county

The county also faces increased law enforcement costs.
YOUNGSTOWN -- Recounting ballots and getting guns off the street could put a dent in Mahoning County coffers, commissioners were told Thursday.
Joseph Caruso, assistant county administrator, said that if a recount of ballots cast for president is ordered, the county would have to foot the bill.
He also warned that a federal program that helped county law enforcement authorities get illegal guns and firearms violators off the street no longer exists.
The Libertarian political party has challenged the ballots cast in Ohio for this year's presidential election. If the legal challenge is upheld, all the ballots cast for either President Bush or Sen. John Kerry would have to be recounted county by county.
Caruso said this would be a large expense to the county's election board. He said the County Commissioners Association of Ohio has filed legal briefs on behalf of the 88 county elections boards to have the state fund a recount.
If the state balks, however, and a court rules for the recount, the cost would have to be borne by the local elections board, who would have to request money from the county, Caruso said.
County elections board officials were unavailable to give a cost estimate for a recount.
Law enforcement fund
Caruso also said the omnibus spending bill passed by Congress and signed by Bush eliminated a federal grant program through the U.S. Justice Department that local governments could access to gain funding for law enforcement activities.
Caruso said about $45 million had been earmarked nationwide in the form of grants for local police agencies to prosecute firearms violators and to curtail the sale of weapons on the black market. That money is now gone.
County Prosecutor Paul J. Gains said Mahoning had been getting $125,000 a year in federal grant money that provided for a prosecutor and investigators to specifically handle firearm offenses in conjunction with the U.S. Attorney's Office and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
He said he will try to continue the firearms prosecution program through the general fund. He concedes, however, that with the defeat of the sales tax, it will be difficult.
The investigators work closely with the ATF, and he has no choice but to absorb them, which means he will ask to fund those positions in his 2005 budget.
"I don't want to give the criminals an edge," the prosecutor said.