The Lake County solid waste district should temper spending of new income tax revenues with frugality rather than using it for proposed employee pensions, a district board member says.
County Councilwoman Christine Cid, a member of the Lake County Solid Waste Management District Board, said taxpayers are looking for government entities to tread carefully with revenues from a newly adopted 1.5 percent local option income tax. The new revenue is set to hit local government coffers in 2014.
Cid said some of the $249,000 the district will receive from the income tax in 2014 should go to reducing the amount of money county residents pay into the district's general fund.
"Of course we should make sure all of our programs are whole first," Cid said. "But that doesn't mean we have to spend it all. We shouldn't just spend it because we have it.
"We should look at reducing our general fund levy with some of those dollars."
Controversy erupted earlier this week when a line item in the district's proposed 2014 budget proposed using all next year's new income tax revenue to enroll district employees in the Indiana Public Employees' Retirement Fund, or PERF.
That line item has since been changed from "Retirement/PERF" to "Contingency" at the request of waste district board Chairman David Hamm, who also sits on the Lake County Council.
Waste district Executive Director Jeff Langbehn, who would benefit from such a pension plan, joined other board members Thursday in emphatic promises that no pension proposals or funding mechanisms have been finalized.
Cid said she disagreed with the concept of using $500,000 in income tax revenues over the next two years to enroll district employees in PERF and pay for retroactive years in the plan, so the employees could be vested for their full years of service.
She said district employees already have been offered an IRA-type retirement plan into which the district pays a portion.
...
