Sheriff’s deputies should extend wage concessions

During the campaign for the renewal of the half-percent sales tax in the May primary election, Mahoning County commissioners and others made it clear that approval would not end government’s financial crisis.

We bring this up because recently the president of union representing sheriff’s deputies contended that people who voted for the tax thought it was going to fix the department’s budgetary problems. That certainly wasn’t what Sheriff Randall Wellington promised, nor was it the understanding of county taxpayers who have been paying attention to the revenue-expenditure discussion.

Indeed, in endorsing the renewal of the half-percent sales tax, we made it clear that the $13 million it is expected to generate each year would not erase the red ink.

Voters approved the renewal for five years by a vote of 68 to 32 percent. The other half-percent sales tax was renewed for a continuous period in May 2007.

But because of the national recession, all projections about revenues are constantly being reworked. The bottom line: County commissioners, who control the main operating fund, must continue to exact concessions from county employees at every level in order to keep the books balanced.

And since 70 percent of the general fund pays for criminal justice, led by the sheriff’s department, reductions in payroll are inevitable. That’s because 80 percent or so of just about every operating fund in the public sector goes for salaries and benefits.

Indeed, the concessions, including unpaid floating holidays every two weeks, deputies previously agreed to expire at the end of the month. The sheriff is currently negotiating an extension with the deputies’ union.

Concessions are a small price to pay for having a job in this tough economy. Just ask the 400,000 mostly private sector workers who lost their jobs in Ohio over the past four years.

But Sheriff’s Deputy Glenn Kountz, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 141, seems to think that the fiscal problems confronting the sheriff’s department are the result of mismanagement by the commissioners.

“We’re waiting for the commissioners to act, and they’re not acting,’ Kountz said recently. “They’re not doing anything. They have no plan” to address the financial crisis.

The union president is being disingenuous, at best. There has been no lack of detailed information from the commissioners and the budget director, George Tablack, who also is the administrator, and there have been numerous calls for belt-tightening across the board.

Reality

The money just isn’t there — and public employees have got to recognize that, the way those in the private sector have done for the past several years.

But the union does not believe what commissioners David Ludt, Anthony Traficant and John McNally and Administrator Tablack have been saying and it has hired a forensic auditor to review the county’s books.

That’s the union’s prerogative, but the fact remains that the $11.8 million budget for the sheriff’s department this year — $17.3 million was spent last year — has forced layoffs.

Although the original number of 86 deputies and two civilians was reduced last week by Sheriff Wellington to 65, the effects of the layoffs are evident. The misdemeanor jail is closed and prisoners from the main county jail are being released as a result of the employee cutbacks that went into effect on Sunday.

The jail will be able to house 412 inmates, compared with the 602 prior to the furloughs. It could have been worse had all 86 layoffs taken place, with only 252 inmates being kept.

It all comes down to money, as Deputy Kountz all but acknowledged when he revealed that his union is proposing a new sales tax dedicated solely to the sheriff’s department.

Voters could be asked in November to approve the tax, the amount of which has yet to be determined.