Citizens’ Budget Panel Urges Cecil County Hiring Freeze, “Level” School Funds

April 11, 2012
By

A citizen’s budget advisory committee urged Cecil County Commissioners Tuesday to impose a hiring freeze for most county employee positions, keep the county schools budget at the current level, and reject a proposal for a limited county-operated ambulance service.

The report also urged opening up community services all over the county to receipt of “local impact aid” revenues from the Hollywood Casino in Perryville, instead of the current county policy limiting funds to projects located west of Route 272.

James Butkiewicz, chairman of the panel, told the commissioners that there was “a pretty strong consensus in our committee” that the geographic restrictions on use of slots revenues “doesn’t make sense” and “local to us means the county.”

It was the second year for a citizens’ panel to review county departments and programs to offer budget advice to the County Commissioners. Last year, the panel made several recommendations, on schools’ funding and cutting health benefits costs, that the Commissioners rejected.

This year, the panel said that budget requests from county departments and programs exceeded projected available revenues by $14.2 million. The panel’s report said members had been advised by county officials that those requests would have to be cut by $10.6 million and that an estimated $3.6 million could come from using county “fund balances” or reserve funds.

One of the areas to win the panel’s approval for new staffing was a recent proposal by Sheriff Barry Janney to take over security at the county courthouse, because Cecil County is the only county in the state without armed security forces at its Circuit courthouse. Janney proposed to the Commissioners last week hiring five contractual, part-time, armed officers, with full law enforcement powers, who would be employees of the Sheriff’s Department but without benefits.

Janney said at a budget hearing last Wednesday that he anticipated using retired law enforcement officers for the contractual employees.

“We think we probably should have armed security at the courthouse, sad to say,” Butkiewicz told the commissioners.

But Janney’s other requests for more deputies were shot down by the budget advisory panel. Janney has told the commissioners he wanted to hire five new deputies, including one additional deputy to be assigned to the Drug Task Force and one who would be detailed to work on investigating the rising problem of prescription drug abuse.

In his presentation to the County Commissioners, Janney outlined his department’s work, in cooperation with other law enforcement agencies, to crack down on improper practices of some “pain management” health care providers and doctor-shopping by pill addicts. “These prescription investigations are very labor intensive and require a high degree of complexity,” Janney told the commissioners in justifying the new position.

Janney also requested 2 positions at the community corrections/work-release portion of the detention center facility but the panel rejected that idea and also said that five currently vacant positions should not be filled, at salary savings of over $300,000. In addition, the sheriff’s department has agreed with the panel’s recommendation to work toward consolidating its Information Technology functions with those of the county government, for possible savings of $625,000.

Meanwhile, the county public schools had asked for a small increase of about $671,000 over the current year’s budget provided by the county and the advisory panel rejected that increase. Instead, the panel’s report urged what is called “flat funding” of the schools, or keeping the county’s share at the same level in the new budget as currently provided.

But even that funding level has options for further cuts while still complying with the bare-minimum, or “maintenance of effort,” funding level required of the county by state law. That is because the state mandate is based upon the student enrollment, and for the new budget year the county schools are showing a 111-pupil decline. That translates into possible additional cuts of $485,000 in county funds, while still complying with the maintenance of effort rules.

Last year, Commissioner Diana Broomell (R-4) urged the county to consider seeking a waiver from the state of the maintenance of effort requirement, but eventually the commissioners did not pursue that option. And this year, Broomell said several months ago that the commissioners had agreed among themselves that they would provide at least the maintenance of effort level of funding and would not seek a waiver.

Since then, the General Assembly has passed new legislation to put more teeth into the maintenance of effort mandate, providing that if a county did not provide sufficient funds, the state would withhold income tax revenues due to the county and instead turn over funds directly to a local school board to make up any funding shortfall.

But even providing funds at the “maintenance of effort” level in the new FY2013 budget could pose problems for the schools, which had to lay off some staff and teachers in the current budget year—the only county department that had to do so—to cope with the limited budget imposed this year. The budget advisory panel had also proposed ‘level’ funding of the schools in its previous report but the County Commissioners made deeper cuts for Fiscal 2012.

In other key findings, the budget advisory panel ruled out a new proposal by county Emergency Services director Richard Brooks to create a county-operated basic ambulance service, to supplement the services provided by the county’s volunteer fire companies. The proposal—which could cost over $6 million over a four year period– has triggered controversy and opposition from a majority of the county’s fire companies, according to the president of the county firemen’s association.

The budget panel’s decision was based purely on the costs, The panel said the volunteer fire companies were working on cheaper alternatives, but did not take into account the new proposal made by the volunteers last week for a Cecilton/Hack’s Point part-time paid staffing solution for the southern Cecil County area that has the slowest response times for emergency medical services in the county. That plan would cost the county $100,000 in the new budget year, local officials said.

[SEE previous Cecil Times report here: http://ceciltimes.com/2012/04/cecil-county-volunteer-fire-companies-propose-cecilton-ambo-solution/ ]

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

3 Responses to Citizens’ Budget Panel Urges Cecil County Hiring Freeze, “Level” School Funds

  1. Russ on April 13, 2012 at 6:42 am

    How about a reduction in the size of the County workforce, not just a hiring freeze? A 30% reduction would go along way in getting our fiscal house in order, and we wouldn’t even notice the difference in service delivery. Our County has become just like the State: unwilling to make the tough decisions by adopting an “employment for life” mentality on the taxpayers backs. We just can’t afford it anymore.

  2. RuKidding on April 13, 2012 at 10:08 am

    To suggest that the county cut 30% of its workforce is absolutely ridiculous. Clearly you have no concept of the amount of work that county employees do and the services they provide – all while being subjected to budget cuts, 3 years without raises and people such as yourself.

    The idea that these employees have an “employment for life” mentality is simply ludicrous. The truth of the matter is that people are scared – they see layoffs at the schools, jobs going unfilled and being cut altogether. But, they show up for work every day and do their jobs well only to be met with uninformed comments such as yours. By the way, no, I am not a county employee.

    • Russ on April 14, 2012 at 9:02 am

      Really? Seriously? The way you think is exactly the problem. No one said that the employees have an “employment for life” mentality; it’s folks like you and the elected officials who have that mentality. No leadership or guts to make the tough choices. Do you think that all of the private sector employees who lost their jobs over the last 5 years were slackers? They showed up to work everyday and did their job well too. When the economy tanked and the funds ran out so did their jobs. The government is the only employment entity that remains blind to the fact that the money is gone. We who are paying the bill (the taxpayer) expect the government to shrink accordingly.

      To claim that I am uninformed because I believe that the County needs to live within its means, lower our taxes and shrink its size is the “ridiculous” statement. To think that the County could not do its job with a 30% smaller work force is really the “uniformed” opinion.

Leave a Reply to Russ Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

ADVERTISEMENTS

Fine Maryland Wines
Proudly made in Cecil County

www.dovevalleywine.com