Mahoning County must sustain spending cuts, budget director says

YOUNGSTOWN — To balance its general fund budget in 2010, Mahoning County must sustain the $6 million in spending cuts it achieved last year and cut an additional $2.5 million to $3 million in spending this year, said George J. Tablack, county administrator and budget director.

“2010 will be the most challenging year financially for Mahoning County in all the years I worked with it,” said Tablack, who became county auditor in 1987 and assumed his current titles about four years ago.

Carol McFall, chief deputy county auditor, said, however, that she believes the county went through worse financial turmoil when the county sales taxes were being voted on and off between 1997 and 2004, causing mass layoffs of county employees and closings of parts of the county jail.

Last November, the voters rejected a continuous renewal of one of the county’s two half-percent sales taxes. If it isn’t renewed in May, collections of that sales tax will end Sept. 30, 2010, and the county’s receipt of revenues from it will cease at the end of 2010.

McFall warned that a tax failure in May would force the county to quickly make additional spending cuts in 2010 in anticipation of the loss of sales tax revenue in 2011.

The voters made the other half-percent sales tax continuous in May 2007. Each sales tax raises between $13 million and $14 million annually for the general fund, which is the county’s main operating fund.

Read more in Saturday’s Vindicator and Vindy.com