I can almost hear the Church Lady now: “isn’t that conveeeenient!” But I suppose Wicomico County dodges a bullet:
With the recently completed official audit for Fiscal Year 2009 now in hand, Wicomico County Executive Richard M. Pollitt, Jr., has announced that an additional $3.5 Million are available to support the county’s Roads operation until the end of the current Fiscal Year on June 30, 2010. Until the County received the final audited fund balance report on the Roads fund, records indicated that these funds were encumbered and, therefore, not available. As a result of the updated information, Mr. Pollitt has withdrawn his pending budget amendment request for the use of General Fund appropriations to support Roads.
Mr. Pollitt commented, “This new information somewhat changes the overall budget amendment which the County Council has been considering since I submitted it in early October. In the General Fund, neither the revenue nor expense portion now includes additional appropriations for Roads, and therefore helps to conserve the County’s General Fund reserves. I believe the adjusted amendment now conforms to my wishes and to Council’s stated intent to place Wicomico County in the best possible financial position to enter the upcoming Fiscal Year 2011 budget session.”
The county has been forced to consider using General Fund support for Roads operations since last summer’s State cut of roughly 94% in traditional Roads revenue. Pollitt has repeatedly pledged that he will not allow the Roads Department to close and that the roads will be kept safe.
However, I don’t think that because of this “found” money the county should abandon the cost-saving measures they were considering in order to keep the roads department going. It should also be an opportunity to look into privatization of certain functions as is prudent both fiscally and servicewise.
Again, this goes back to having the budget compiled from scratch each year, something which was promised by Rick Pollitt when he ran for office in 2006. In this case, though, someone messed up and placed the $3.5 million in a column of money thought untouchable. Obviously the buck stops with the County Executive and it makes me wonder what other mistakes have been made which wouldn’t have been discovered without an audit and how much they may have cost county taxpayers.
But it does take away another excuse to remove the revenue cap and means county roads may not be in such bad shape after what’s shaping up to be a tough winter.
I am not sure why you seem to think that privatization of work will save money. I am sure this has been explored. The state has tried to contract the bulk of their work out over the years simply because they have the wallet for it, however, that decision is being revisited. The roads dept may have enough to get them thru till July, but the real problem will be after that point when I am sure the governor will once again cut 90+% leaving the roads dept with a 6 million dollar budget to be funded by the county.
If the roads budget was already cut 90% then a 90% cut on top of that wouldn’t be nearly as significant, unless you assume the initial cut wasn’t permanent.
It may be that privatization doesn’t save money, and perhaps we can use the experiences of other similarly-sized counties to judge whether that will or not. Perhaps the county employees are doing their tasks in a timely, efficient manner and that expertise would be difficult to replicate by someone else.
But Wicomico County needs to figure out the best way to survive in a brave new world of state funding cuts and their revenue cap. Perhaps it was shortsighted to pass such a cap in the first place but by all accounts the County Council governing at the time richly deserved the reprimand. It’s interesting to note that all four incumbent Democrats said adios at the next election once that and the County Executive were put in place.
The roads funding has always been provided by the state. Let’s assume that a bare bones budget of 6million is what it takes to fund that dept. If the state, 2 months into the fiscal year says “sorry, we changed our mind, were taking 90% of that back”, I call that significant. The burden is then placed on the county to fund a charter mandated department thru their own already established budget. The reality is that the state has shown the county in a cruel way that they had better start figuring out how to fund itthemselves from now on. Who knows if the funding will return. How can the state charge a tax on fuel for road maintenance, and then deny the citizens of that service? Maryland is the only state in the country with a board of public works comprised of 3 members who have that much power (thanks to the democrats, since they and Glendenning made it that way) I think the counties should sue them.