Sales tax O.K. won't ease Mahoning County's pain

Mahoning County's two freshmen commissioners, Anthony Traficanti and John McNally IV, were appropriately low-key Tuesday night after the complete but unofficial election results showed that the 0.5 percent sales tax had been approved by voters.
Appropriately low-key? Yes, given that the county is preparing for the state auditor to come in and declare government to be in fiscal emergency.
Happy days aren't here again -- even with the passage of the tax, which had been rejected by voters last November. The loss of revenue, coupled with sputtering state and national economies, mean that it will be quite some time before the county's financial house can be put in order. Indeed, McNally and Traficanti, who both took office in January, made it clear that the days of spending with abandon and of exploding payrolls are long gone.
"We're not going to go out and start hiring people tomorrow or bringing people back from layoff," McNally said Tuesday night.
Traficanti took it a step further, saying the commissioners intend to immediately begin a top-to bottom review of spending in order to identify waste and mismanagement. He also said that he and his colleagues will go to the residents with their findings and seek public support for the changes they propose.
Taxpayers, who have long demanded that local government do more with less, have an obligation to support Traficanti, McNally and Commissioner David Ludt in this important quest. Given that county government is made up of general fund and non-general fund departments and of officeholders who are elected individually, the common denominator is the public.
Audit committee
Last month, Auditor George Tablack, who has warned that the county will run out of money before the end of the year if the current pace of spending continues, won commission approval for the creation of an audit committee. The committee is made up volunteer, private-sector citizens with experience in finance and accounting. Most are private citizens with knowledge about county operations. And, most important, four of the seven-member committee are not politicians.
The panel would do well to use as its guide two studies of county government that we have embraced. One was done by the Peat Marwick consulting firm, which offered more than 200 recommendations for changing the way government operates; the other is a state performance audit that provides details on how spending can be cut. For instance, the audit talks about consolidation of the court system below the Common Pleas level, and the use of video arraignments.
We are well aware that although the county commissioners control the general fund pursestrings, they don't have final say when it comes to spending by such entities as the courts. Thus, the only way Traficanti, McNally and Ludt can persuade all departments, including those not supported by the general fund, to tighten their belts and require employees to carry more of the burden of benefits such as health care, is shine the public spotlight on them.
For their part, officeholders should make it clear to their employees that Tuesday's approval of the tax was not an invitation for government to go on a spending spree. Taxpayers will be closely monitoring the actions by the commissioners and others to ensure that the promises made during the campaign are kept.
Failure to do so will result in the 0.5 percent sales tax up for renewal in 2007 being rejected by the voters. That should be incentive enough for everyone in county government to make sacrifices.