By Larry Riley in the Muncie Star-Press:
Whether Delaware County government will stay in the black this year remains a good question one week from entering the final quarter of the calendar, and fiscal, year.
Funding of the county’s general fund, which pays for most routine government services, is always fluid, and requires monthly tweaks — read: additional appropriations — and last week the Delaware County Council’s finance committee made some.
Eighteen thousand dollars was appropriated, $8,000 for jury fees, and $10,000 for psychological tests for defendants represented by the county’s public defenders.
One miscreant in particular who’s already been examined four times — one evaluation costing $5,000 — needs even more.
Perhaps taxpayers need to have their heads examined.
The additional appropriations come in the wake of days of formulating next year’s budget, which will be formally adopted Tuesday, while simultaneously trying to cut wherever possible from this year’s shaky budgets.
During budget hearings that ended last week, council members did manage to slice $345,117 from budgets of various offices whose officeholders queued up to try to cooperate while asserting that they’re running on bare bones now and for the foreseeable future.
Actually, the situation is more dire than that next year.
The 2014 budget cuts are more ephemeral than real: nearly $6 million of budget reductions were for health care costs and sheriff’s pension funding that were double-booked for legal reasons.
The actual cuts were much less, and the 2014 budget is $400,000 higher than this year’s budget — the budget that we still aren’t sure will last.
With some additional sleight-of-hand, the budget can look doable on paper — except for one inescapable figure.
Though the county council places no priority on long-range planning, an annual budget is at least a one-year forecast, and many elements of that forecast are known, or close to known, quantities.
We know we’ll lose a couple of hundred thousands in inheritance taxes the state legislature did away with. We know exactly what we’ll get in county option income tax revenues (because the state already has told us) and the figure is down a couple of percent from this year’s COIT take.
...
http://www.thestarpress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013309220029
