Slash and burn, baby, burn

While I wasn’t necessarily out to get my name in the paper (fortunately there was no accompanying picture) I did want to chip in my two cents regarding the direction of the county budget at the meeting last evening. Apparently the other local bloggers were more concerned about who has particular candidate signs in their yard, but I was very interested in where my hard-earned tax money goes and so were about 80 other people who attended the meeting and had an opportunity to say their piece.

As County Executive Rick Pollitt noted, the budget is still a “work in progress” and depends heavily on both citizen input and events in Annapolis as the General Assembly finishes work on the state budget (as Rick said the budget was “not safe” with the continuing session). This was an “invitation to become engaged in the process.”

With all but one County Council member present (Stevie Prettyman was the absentee) along with State’s Attorney Davis Ruark, Pollitt (who also quipped that “sometimes I wish I wasn’t” County Executive) rolled through a PowerPoint presentation about the budget then opened the floor to comments.

Among the slides in the presentation, it was revealed that “the (national) economy has taken an unprecedented decline” – to which I noted rhetorically whether anyone had heard of the Great Depression or even lived through the “misery index” of the Carter years – and that Governor O’Malley inherited a structural deficit which compounded the problem. Left out was the tidbit that O’Malley both raised taxes and increased spending while the previous budget was indeed in balance without the need for midyear adjustments as we’ve gone through the last two years because revenue fell short of expectations.

Now that I’ve set this straight, Pollitt then stated he “will not compromise” Wicomico County’s bond rating but may have to ask for a state waiver of the “maintenance of effort” funding for education. Most of the cuts outlined by Pollitt’s plan fell on the shoulders of education, public safety, and roads – the politically obvious and painful stuff. It was also pointed out that education uses the entire revenue stream from property tax (44% of the projected revenue) and then some.

Much of what the Daily Times article discusses is Pollitt’s shift in attitude from removing the county’s revenue cap from property taxes altogether to modifying it to an larger allowed annual increase through various means. He mentioned in the presentation that the taxation rate has decreased by 32.5 cents per $100 in the last nine years and that the cap had resulted in a revenue loss to the county of $12 million over the last three years. Welcome back to the shadow budget.

As I pointed out in that post that revenue “loss” is actually money spent as the people who kept it wished to. It’s the result of the “taxpayer rebellion” that Rick told us led to both the revenue cap and his job as County Executive. To Pollitt, it was “time for the community to talk about the revenue cap” but to me it’s time to talk about alternatives to the way we think about services.

Two revenue sources the presentation alluded to were the institution of an 0.5% transfer tax on real estate transactions and increasing the recordation tax, along with dipping into the county’s “rainy day” fund. In all, cuts comprised about 55% of the$12 million shortfall makeup while revenues and funding transfers made up the rest.

Including myself, I counted 21 people who spoke during public comment. The majority of them came up to advocate for maintaining funding for a particular cause, especially the West Side Community Center. Others wanted particular parks to stay open, education funding maintained, no cuts to the volunteer fire departments, senior services to escape unscathed (and they will – Pollitt vowed he was “not going to cut the seniors of this county”), and a removal of the revenue cap so roads could be better maintained.

More useful to me were those who spoke about better alternatives. Johnnie Miller talked about enhancing incentives for growth such as increasing allowed densities or eliminating the tax on inventories (using Home Depot or Lowe’s as examples of companies who could easily pull up stakes and move a few miles north to Delaware), while John Palmer – who was quoted in the Daily Times article – chipped in the idea about energy management but also brought up that no public input occurred at Pollitt’s “economic summit” earlier this year.

We even had one person, whose name I didn’t catch, put Rick on the defensive regarding the outcome of the landfill theft case, which she called “disgusting” because the convicted maintain their full pension and benefits.

Now let’s get to what I said and why I said it.

One thing I don’t know from the presentation is how much county money goes to labor – if there are 2800 county employees as one person told me, that must comprise a significant if not overwhelming portion of Wicomico expenditures. Obviously, if each day of furlough can save the county $100,000 (Pollitt’s budget plan had one furlough day per quarter, totaling $400,000) then it stands to reason an 8 percent temporary cut as the state of Delaware has done would save a large amount of money. In real terms, it would be like reducing 12 months’ salary to 11 months, just spread out over each paycheck.

Using my public school math, an 8% cut would have the same effect as 16 furlough days (16 of 200 work days per year) so my best guess is $1.6 million off the top. That would make a significant dent in the deficit. Granted, that would be a blow to county employees who aren’t seeing their expenses go down either, but I think it’s preferable to layoffs at a time when it’s claimed that employees are being spread thin due to a hiring freeze.

It appears that the public needs to consider the choice of what is truly important for government to provide. We have grown to depend on the government to do things perhaps performed better in the private sector because someone decided it was a “right” to have the government in charge of the action in question. And as long as people are struggling to survive in choppy economic waters, the priorities need to be placed in order and maybe we’ll find that some of the things cut won’t be missed when times improve.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer. View all posts by Michael