From the Louisville Courier-Journal:
The Clark County auditor is expected to keep paying bills for the county sheriff’s department, which spent its remaining budget for 2013 before the end of June and estimates it will need another $2.9 million to keep it and the county jail operating for the rest of the year.
Clark Circuit Court Judge Vicki Carmichael on June 21 granted Sheriff Danny Rodden’s lawsuit request for an injunction and ordered his office and the Clark County Council to go into remediation to find money from funds outside the county general fund.
A remediation date hasn’t been set.
The council appropriated $1.2 million more in April to help Rodden’s office offset part of the $3.7 million cut the County Council made to his budget in March to meet the state’s $7.8 million general budget order. It originally passed a general budget in October that was $16.5 million.
Also in April, the Clark County commissioners denied a request to lend the sheriff $800,000 from its cumulative bridge fund, saying that money is needed for bridge projects.
...
Much of the county’s ongoing budget crisis stemmed from a decision by the County Council in 2007 to cut property tax collections by 25 percent, or $2.7 million, for the following year. The state limits increases in county property tax collections each year to no more than about 3 percent, meaning the council can’t increase tax collections enough to keep up with increased expenses since 2008.
The Indiana Department of Local Government required another budget reduction this year because projected tax revenues again “were insufficient to fund the adopted budget.”
The council appealed to the Indiana Tax Court in January 2012 but the court has yet to rule on whether it will overturn a Department of Local Government decision in late 2010 that rejected a special property tax increase the county requested to solve budget problems created by the 2007 levy reduction.
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20130708/NEWS02/307080092/Clark-County-Indiana-mandate-sheriff-jail?nclick_check=1
