Hiding from need to make cuts doesn’t lessen the need

Hiding from need to make cuts doesn’t lessen the need

When will government leaders learn that if layoffs are inevitable, it is better to do them sooner rather than later?

It’s really a matter of elementary math, especially for a government entity. In private business, a company facing tough economic times may have a business plan that it hopes will increase revenue and lessen the severity of cutbacks. But government has a concrete idea of what it has to work with — the budget that is set early in the year projects expenses and revenue, and, unless voters approve a tax increase, that revenue isn’t going to go up, at least not by much. A bad economy, however, can have a pretty dramatic negative impact on tax receipts. When private industry cuts jobs, income tax revenue goes down and when people buy less, sales tax receipts are reduced.

So if a government entity knows that it is facing a $100,000 shortfall, for instance, the department manager knows that he or she has to cut two or three jobs — in January or February. Wait till June, and four or five people will have to be laid off to make up the shortfall. Wait till September, and it could be up to eight or 10.

If the layoffs are done early, nearly normal operations can be maintained if everybody pitches in to pick up the slack. The longer the layoffs are delayed, the more difficult it becomes for a department to function.

None of this is rocket science. It simply requires the people entrusted with public office to make tough decisions at the right time.

And yet, in recent days we’ve seen reports that Mahoning County Probate Court Judge Mark A. Belinky will lay off 13 of his 17 workers in three weeks because his court is running out of money.

Looking for a lifeline

“We tried to keep everybody working as long as possible, hoping that this budget dispute would be resolved,” Belinky said, which means he was hoping that higher courts would order the Mahoning County commissioners to give him the funding he demanded rather than the funding the commissioners said they could afford. Belinky may still be banking on the court stepping in and ordering the commissioners to find another $200,000 or so to keep the court operating.

If that happens, it will be a shameless example of one court’s rewarding the bad behavior of another.

Meanwhile, the city of Youngstown is playing an even dicier game.

True, city officials have sent layoff notices to seven full-time workers and 11 part-timers in various departments, but that will save the city only $101,041 because it’s already the third quarter of operations and the city has to pay about 60 percent of the employees’ salary for unemployment,

But while the city is saving $100,000, the city anticipates a loss of about $1 million in income tax revenue from that projected for the budget, and Mayor Jay Williams has allowed himself to be strung along by the union representing city police officers. Safety-force costs are the city’s biggest general fund item and attempting to balance the budget without making cuts there is simply impossible.

Williams was quoted the other day as saying, “this is the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.” City employees would never know it. During the Depression, city workers faced draconian cuts in numbers and wages (and they had no health care coverage). Today, Williams hasn’t even been able to get patrolmen to agree to a new two-tier pay schedule that would affect new hirees.

The result is predictable. If the city manages through creative bookkeeping to get through this year without further layoffs, it is going to enter the new year in even worse financial shape, facing even greater potential deficits.

Having chosen not to make some tough decisions this year, the mayor and city council will have no choice but to make them in 2010. And no one will be able to say they didn’t see it coming.

P.S.

A postscript that would be amusing if it weren’t outrageous: Even while Judge Belinky was talking about the need to lay off virtually his entire staff, he put in a purchase order for $3,000 worth of novelty pencils (two-headed erasers, like a gavel) that were apparently intended for distribution at the Canfield Fair. Belinky defended this action by saying that the money was coming from a separate fund and, besides, everybody does it.

Well, if other elected officials are using public funds for novelty items that obviously have more re-election value to the officeholder than practical value to the taxpayer, they, too, should be called to account.

Name the names and trinkets, your honor.