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It's County Budget Time
Posted 12-21-2002
This is the season of giving, of
joy and happiness. But across Pennsylvania, county governments are in the
"take away" mode because it is budget time. Like our colleagues in almost
every county in Pennsylvania, we in Westmoreland County are seeing increases
in spending with revenues essentially flat. All the e-mails I've seen from
other counties show their general fund spending going up anywhere from 2% to
12%. Most are holding the line on property taxes and spending down reserves.
We are going to cut millions
of dollars from the budget requests we received this year, but even with
those cuts, spending still goes up. We have contracts with unions that call
for increases in the 4% range, and though over time we have negotiated for
less costly health insurance, even that insurance is going up about 12% for
2003. All the private firms that sell us goods and services expect to be
paid more as their costs of doing business go up. This cycle is not unique
to our county or to county governments. The federal government has a deficit
budget, the Commonwealth has a deficit budget, and states across the country
are all facing deficit budgets. When those deficits happen at higher levels
of government, the consequences flow downhill.
We have a budget that is over
$290 million dollars. The general fund, the portion the commissioners really
control, is between $95 and $100 million, so it is about one third of the
total budget. County property taxes, our primary tool locally to fund the
budget, bring in just over $59 million. Holding the line on the millage
means that property tax revenue is projected to increase only about $100,000
for next year even with the new construction going on in our county.
Taxes did go up two mills to
16.99 mills in 2001, but that was the first increase since 1993. That was a
considerable length of time between increases considering the costs of doing
business increased significantly in that time period. Like many other
counties in Pennsylvania, we will not raise the millage, but use reserves to
balance the budget.
Any news that there is a
monumental crisis with the county's finances is overstated. It is not a rosy
picture, but it is better than some other governments and probably a little
worse than some others. The challenges we are facing now would have been
experienced in the late 1990's except that we enjoyed an $18 million
one-time benefit from a 1970's asset sale at the community college. We were
able to spread that money out as a relief for general fund debt service
payments that allowed us to use those general fund dollars for other
expenses.
You might say just cut
everything until the budget comes into balance. And, we do make cuts every
year. But, we do not provide any services that are not mandated except to
run a county park system. The parks are a resource we can all enjoy, and
they are a relatively small part of the overall budget. We cannot eliminate
mandated services, and short of the elimination of more than three hundred
jobs that are paid for from the general fund, we are not going to balance
the budget by only reducing the payroll.
Another area that we should
not be paying for, but continue to do so, is the court system. Several years
ago the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the Commonwealth should
provide for a "unified judiciary" meaning that the justice system should be
the same in every county. To do that the Commonwealth should pay for the
courts. It has not happened. In 2002, we subsidized the courts and
court-related functions with nearly $13 million, and the projection for 2003
is even higher. Since 1997, the county has subsidized the courts with over
$59 million.
None of those numbers include
our county prison. The prison that will cost over $10 million to run next
year was, in theory, only to be a place people were held before going to
trial. We have hundreds of people sentenced to jail time, that drive the
operating costs up considerably. If Harrisburg lived up to its
responsibility to fund the courts and incarcerate all people sentenced in
their courts, we would be in much better shape financially.
I'm not making excuses for
our tough financial situation. I am simply explaining there are many, many
factors that affect the county's budget. Simple explanations and sweeping
generalities do not fully explain the complexities of a $290 million budget.
Can we do better? We certainly can. But if you do some investigating, the
positives far outweigh the negatives, not only in the quality of services we
provide, but also in how county government is managed. We will continue to
make tough choices and manage aggressively, but there is no magic wand to
wave that will make the financial picture perfect. |
