Mahoning departments slashed for '07

YOUNGSTOWN — A reduction of more than $6 million in the county’s general fund budget — attributed in part to the off-again, on-again sales tax — will likely cause the loss of the equivalent of between 25 and 50 full-time jobs among more than 600 employees paid through the general fund, Mahoning County Administrator George Tablack says.

On Friday, county commissioners adopted a $49.6 million general fund budget for 2007, which is substanitally below the $55.9 million appropriated for 2006 and the $53.4 million actually spent this year through Dec. 22.

The general fund is the county’s main operating fund.

The $49.6 million also was approved by the county budget commission, which consists of the county prosecutor, auditor and treasurer.

County Auditor Michael Sciortino said the revenue drop is due in part to the $10 million lost between the defeat of the county’s half-percent sales tax at the polls in November 2004 and the resumption of collections from it after it was reinstated May 3, 2005.

Another factor in the reduced 2007 budget was the county’s need to repay the $7.34 million the commissioners borrowed to keep sheriff’s deputies in the county jail until Jan. 1, 2006, when revenue started coming in from the reinstated tax, he added.

“This budget is tight. Any extra revenue that we had this year, in terms of carry-over, went to pay off certain debts,” including the borrowing of the $7.34 million, Sciortino said.

“We’re basically only appropriating new monies that will come in in 2007,” Tablack explained. “As best as we can tell today, there is nothing else coming,” in revenues beyond what’s projected in the budget adopted Friday, he added.

Department heads should match their staffing to the appropriations made, he said. The commissioners can hold any officeholder who spends more than 60 percent of his appropriations by June 30 personally liable for the excess, Tablack said.

Each of the county’s two half-percent sales taxes generates about $14 million in annual revenue for the general fund.

If the half-percent that will be before the voters in May is renewed, it will maintain the budget, as is, for 2007. If it fails, however, the county will have only $36 million in the 2008 general fund budget, placing Mahoning in fiscal emergency, Sciortino explained.

“It’ll be the end of county operations as we know it,” he said.

The budget for Sciortino’s own office is being cut from the $1,065,057 appropriated for 2006 to $850,000 next year, and Sciortino said he’ll ask his unionized employees to agree to accept cutbacks in work days and hours for everyone in an effort to save money and avoid layoffs.

“Every elected official has to think very hard and serious about what the next couple of months is going to mean,” Sciortino said.

The largest office in the general fund is the sheriff’s department, which will receive $15 million in 2007, compared to the $14.8 million appropriated for it this year.

Sheriff Randall Wellington said that would allow him to keep two-thirds of the jail open, as is the case now, and would likely permit him to avoid layoffs, but it falls below the $19.7 million he said he needed to allow fully reopen the lockup.

Judge James C. Evans, administrative judge of the county common pleas court, said he didn’t think cuts could be made in what he called the “bare bones” court staff, but he predicted layoffs in the prosecutor’s office and clerk of courts office, which would slow the processing of cases through the courts.

Joyce Kale-Pesta, deputy elections director, upon learning that the board of elections would get only $1.3 million, some $700,000 less than what the board requested for 2007, said she didn’t forsee lay-offs, but predicted the merger of more precincts, fewer seasonal hires at election time and forgoing purchases of equipment

“I really have no intentions of closing my office again as I did last year,” for half of each day for seven months, said Recorder Ron Gerberry, whose office was appropriated $575,353 this year and was only budgeted $400,000 for 2007.

“I probably have to lay off people.”