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Official: County must cut $2.5M
Court workers should share in the sacrifices in 2010, the administrator 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, 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 closing 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.
“When you lose $9 million in a single year, the answer isn’t closing part of the jail or cutting back on services to the public,” Tablack said. Instead, he said, the answer is employee concessions and other cost cuts.
Tablack was referring to the recession-induced decline in general fund revenue from $66.2 million in 2008 to $57.5 million in 2009, with about $57 million in revenue being projected for 2010.
The difference between the $57.5 million in revenue and $61.1 million in expenses for the general fund in 2009 was made up though a combination of spending cuts, use of reserve funds and debt refinancing, with only $1 million in uncommitted funds being carried over into 2010, McFall said.
Among the refinanced debts was $3 million for county jail construction. The debt was refinanced for 14 additional years until 2023, McFall said. The county’s $36 million jail opened in 1996.
The $6 million in spending cuts were made last year through layoffs and other cost reductions and shifting of some court expenses from the general fund to special projects funds derived from court filing fees, Tablack said.
Employees took unpaid floating holidays in the clerk of courts, commissioners and sheriff’s offices and the facilities department, Tablack said.
Tablack said he hopes the common pleas court trial judges will reconsider their decision to increase the court’s employee contribution from 5 percent to only 7.5 percent of health-care premiums, instead of raising them to the 10 percent most county workers pay.
In a recent budget hearing, Judge John M. Durkin said the annual savings would only be $20,000 if court employees went from 5 percent to 10 percent health-care premium contributions.
But Tablack told the judge the court workers would be setting an example for other county workers if they paid 10 percent.
“How do you sit at the bargaining table with the unions [representing other county workers] and talk about equity” when such disparities exist? Tablack asked in a Thursday interview. “Too many people think it’s someone else’s responsibility to cut costs,” Tablack observed.
Although personnel costs constitute the largest part of the general fund, McFall said the county needs to explore spending cuts in repairs and maintenance, equipment and office supply purchases, postage, utilities, telephone service, fuel, travel, food for the jail and juvenile justice center, and periodical subscriptions.
“The real solution comes from the departments sitting down and working together to try to come up with innovative ways to cut expenses, but, at the same time, we also have to find new sources of revenue,” such as grants and special projects funding, McFall said.
“We need to make sure that we’re collecting everything that is due us,” including current and delinquent real estate taxes, she said.
As a private business would manage its money, “We’ve got to cut what goes out and increase what comes in,” McFall added.
milliken@vindy.com