Wednesday, December 20, 2006
LISBON — The two Republican Columbiana County commissioners have approved a budget that lets Democratic officials decide next year on a 0.5-percent sales tax.
Republican Commissioners Jim Hoppel and Gary Williams approved appropriations for January on Wednesday.
Democratic Commissioner Sean Logan voted against the measure.
Both sides charged that the other was playing politics.
Williams was defeated in November by Democrat Daniel Bing, who was at the meeting and has indicated he would enact the tax if needed.
Three consecutive voter rejections of the 0.5 percent tax left a $4 million hole in the county’s normal annual budget of about $18 million.
Hoppel has repeatedly campaigned on a pledge not to enact the sales tax. Williams favored re-enacting 2 mills of property tax the commissioners gave up in order to get the 1-percent sales tax. The deadline to do that for 2007 has passed.
Williams said that would have solved the county’s budget problems next year. “That was the way to go,” Williams said.
Logan made a motion Wednesday to enact the 0.5 percent sales tax, but got no support from Hoppel or Williams.
Logan was working on a budget based on the loss of the $4 million in sales taxes that could have forced officials to go to court to get enough money to operate.
Hoppel said the one-month measure will let the Democratic commissioners make their decision about the sales tax. “I think this is a normal procedure,” he said.
Logan said the move was designed “to make the new board look bad.”
The one-month, $1.4 million budget and an expected $500,000 carryover balance at the end of 2006 works out to $17.3 million for 2007, the same amount Hoppel’s figures show the county spent in 2005. Spending figures for 2006 aren’t complete.
Logan tentatively set mandatory hearings on the sales tax Jan. 10 and 17. The times were not confirmed.
The commissioners recently completed similar hearings but took no action. Logan said he had been advised to have new hearings to help prevent any legal challenge to the sales tax.
If the tax is enacted, collections would not reach the county until midsummer.