ELECTION COSTS Price of democracy increases

Overtime expenses will take an extra bite out of county budgets.
By DAVID SKOLNICK
VINDICATOR POLITICS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Officials at local election boards, who exceeded their budgetary amounts during the presidential election, will ask their county commissioners for more money.
Because of economic woes, particularly failures in Mahoning and Columbiana counties to pass sales tax renewals last week, commissioners could struggle to find the cash needed to cover the expensive election.
Thomas McCabe, Mahoning County Board of Elections deputy director, said the costs to hire additional part-time workers as well as overtime for full-timers to prepare for the election, including processing voter registrations and testing election machines, will leave the board with no other choice but to ask county commissioners for more money.
The elections board went $300,000 over its $1.4 million budget, primarily because the county didn't appropriate enough money for poll workers, said Michael Sciortino, Mahoning elections board director. That makes up about two-thirds of the $300,000, he said.
The rest is because election board staff worked around the clock to handle the increases in voter registrations, absentees, and voters for the recent presidential election, Sciortino said.
"We've never seen the overtime put in this year in the past," McCabe said. "This year was unbelievable."
Sales tax defeat
Mahoning Commissioner Ed Reese said the county's well-documented cash problems -- made worse by the defeat of a 0.5 percent permanent sales tax that brought in about $14 million annually -- may make it challenging, to say the least, to come up with the extra money needed by the elections board.
The county is anticipating a debt of more than $14 million next year.
"Money's tight, and everyone's coming to us at the end of the year," Reese said. "We're not totally surprised by this. We'll try to accommodate them, but there's no guarantee."
Local election boards had employees work long shifts and weekends to process voter registration cards, absentee ballots, and other tasks needed to prepare for the election.
Trumbull
The Trumbull County Board of Elections went about $15,000 over its $1.23 million budget for this year because of increases in election supplies, the addition of six part-time workers, and extra work hours put in by full-timers, said Norma Williams, its director. Several of the full-time election board workers will take compensatory time instead of overtime pay, she said.
"I tried to stay within my budget, but we had some extras," Williams said. "I anticipated and planned for some of the increases, but not all of them."
Trumbull residents rejected a 0.5 percent sales tax renewal in November 2003, but the county isn't cash-strapped at this point, said Commissioner James G. Tsagaris. The county could go into 2005 with a carry-over of $2 million to $3 million.
As for covering the election board's additional costs, Tsagaris said, "I'll look at it with the two other commissioners. If the board's short, we'll help them out."
Columbiana
Lois Gall, Columbiana County election board's deputy director, said the agency hasn't had time to determine how much it exceeded its $511,000 annual budget. The board should have a dollar figure next week.
"We'll probably be over our budget," she said. "We had to pay overtime, and for extra help."
Columbiana Commissioner Jim Hoppel said the commissioners will wait to see what that figure is before reacting.
"At this time of the year, we take money from other departments that haven't spent all their money and move it to departments that need it," he said. "We'll see what we can do. We'll work it out."
The Associated Press said last week's election is likely the most expensive in state and federal history. Numerous county election boards in Ohio far exceeded their budgeted amounts.
Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell told election board officials he'll help them lobby lawmakers for some financial relief.
Nationally, the average cost per state of the 2004 election was about $33 million, for a total of as much as $2 billion, according to a preliminary analysis by the National Association of Secretaries of State.
Lawrence
The Lawrence County election board went over its $406,368 annual budget, said Director Marlene Gabriel. But she hasn't calculated the amount yet.
"The cost is definitely much more than our budget," she said. "We had a lot of overtime, and more employees. Our cost is going to be a lot more than our budget. We had a lot of 12- and 18-hour days."
Attempts to reach election officials in Mercer County weren't successful.
skolnick@vindy.com