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Mahoning commissioners expected to OK $62M budget, worker layoffs
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George Tablack
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Mahoning County Commissioner Anthony Traficanti
Even with passage of the 2009 measure, many uncertainties remain.
YOUNGSTOWN — Even after they adopt an austere budget, the Mahoning County commissioners will be facing many unknowns, Administrator George J. Tablack says.
“What we’re trying to estimate are contingencies,” Tablack told the commissioners in a Monday staff meeting. A vote on the county’s full-year budget is set for today.
“It’s still a fluid process,” added Tablack, who is also the county’s budget director.
How the budget reductions will affect staffing patterns still needs to be discussed with unions representing workers in the facilities department, 911 center and clerk of courts office, Tablack said.
With financial uncertainties causing the commissioners to operate under a temporary first-quarter budget until now, the commissioners will adopt the permanent full-year 2009 budget at 10 a.m. today in the courthouse basement, the day before the legal deadline to do so.
Besides a resolution to adopt the budget, the commissioners’ agenda for the public meeting includes a resolution authorizing layoffs among non-union employees whose salaries are paid from the county’s general fund.
On the revenue side, sales tax receipts for the first quarter of 2009 are 4 percent below those of the same period last year, Tablack said.
If that trend continues all year, the county would receive more than $1 million less than the county’s previous estimate of revenue from that source, Tablack said. The county has two half-percent sales taxes, each normally generating about $14 million a year for the general fund.
On a positive note, however, it appears from present trends that the county will receive more than the previously estimated $2.8 million from revenue-generating federal inmates in the county jail this year, Tablack said.
On the expense side, it’s uncertain what the county’s unemployment compensation costs will be because it’s unknown how many employees will be laid off and how many of those furloughed will find jobs elsewhere, he said.
The number of layoffs and the county’s unemployment compensation costs can be reduced if department heads and their staffs agree to take an unpaid day off every two weeks as the sheriff’s department has done, said Tablack and Anthony T. Traficanti, chairman of the commissioners.
Tablack said he encourages the departments to maintain services as much as they can “by keeping as many people employed as possible,’’ but the commissioners can’t dictate the rolling holiday approach to county departments that aren’t controlled by the commissioners.
“We’re lowering their appropriations,” but how and where they cut costs is up to their leadership, Tablack said.
The facilities department plans to make budget cuts through a combination of layoffs and rolling holidays, the administrator said.
Another unknown is the cost of court-appointed lawyers for indigent defendants in criminal cases, Tablack said, noting that the hourly rates paid to those lawyers increased this year.
Yet another unknown is whether judges, other than the probate judge, will impose court orders demanding funding at a certain level, said Commissioner David N. Ludt.
Probate Judge Mark Belinky issued a judgment entry earlier this month demanding that the commissioners fund his court at $915,715 this year, and said he’d file a complaint at the 7th District Court of Appeals if they don’t do so.
Having achieved $3 million in savings through concessions and layoffs in the sheriff’s department, Tablack said the county still must achieve $3 million in savings in the other general fund departments.
The general fund is the county’s main operating fund, upon which the sheriff’s department, prosecutor’s office, courts, board of elections and many other departments depend.
General fund expenditures were about $67.5 million last year. Commissioner John A. McNally IV said he expects the commissioners will approve today a general fund budget totaling about $62 million.
milliken@vindy.com