By Peter H. Milliken

milliken@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

The Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber has explained the mystery of its support for renewal of a half-percent sales tax and silence on the quarter-percent additional sales tax, which are combined in Issue 1 on the Nov. 4 ballot.

“We support the half-percent renewal. We have not considered any additional because the county officials did not provide justification as requested,” said Guy C. Coviello, the chamber’s vice president of government affairs and media.

That led to head scratching among Mahoning County officials.

“I’m a little bit perplexed as to what their opinion is because there’s only one issue on the ballot,” David Ditzler, chairman of the county commissioners.

County officials told the chamber during a spring presentation concerning the half-percent renewal on the May ballot that they were considering asking for an additional sales tax in the future, Coviello said.

At that time, Coviello said, chamber officials told county officials a performance audit or performance review of county government showing how any additional tax would be used should be provided for the chamber to consider supporting a sales-tax increase.

County Budget Director Audrey Tillis said a performance audit of the entire county government might cost between $500,000 and $1 million.

“That is not in our budget to do,” she said.

The chamber supported the permanent renewal-only proposal, which failed in May by 519 votes.

When county officials returned to give an Aug. 22 presentation on the five-year combined renewal and increase proposal for the Nov. 4 ballot to the chamber’s government affairs council, they didn’t present any review or audit to justify a tax increase, Coviello said.

Therefore, that council recommended that the chamber’s board of directors not consider an additional sales tax.

On Oct. 6, the chamber’s board of directors accepted that recommendation and decided to endorse the five-year renewal, but not consider the additional tax, Coviello explained.

If passed, the entire three-quarters of a percent would raise about $24 million a year, exclusively for the sheriff’s, prosecutor’s and coroner’s offices and 911 emergency dispatching center.

The full three-quarters of a percent is needed to compensate for losses in recent years to the county’s general fund in state money and investment income, said Sheriff Jerry Greene.

“Just the half percent puts the county backwards,” Tillis said.

Tillis also said county officials were given only 15 minutes to present their case at the Aug. 22 meeting, whereas they had been given 30 to 45 minutes at the spring meeting.

The county is taking steps designed to save money and improve efficiency, including an employee compensation review it is initiating, and efficiency studies it has performed on its court reporting, microfilming and payroll processes, Tillis said.

Recent installations of modern, energy-efficient boilers in Oakhill Renaissance Place and in the county courthouse are reducing the county’s energy costs, she added.

“As a county, we’re being very efficient and looking at better ways to do everything.” Tillis said.

“I’m not surprised that their committee is confused because we brought six people into their meeting to present the entire case to them” and were told the county had only 15 minutes to give its presentation, Ditzler said.

“If they were truly going to make an independent assessment of the need for the tax, then they didn’t give us the time to present it, and they didn’t seem very interested to begin with,” Ditzler said.

Many of the chamber’s committee members were inattentive to the county’s presentation because they were simultaneously engaged in cellphone communication, Ditzler added.