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Home > Blogs > Butler County News and Issues > Archives > 2009 > May > 06 > Entry
Clerk to commissioners: Cut your own budget first
From today’s paper:
Butler County commissioners are playing shell games with the county’s budget and using a revenue crisis to meddle in elected officials’ affairs, according to county Clerk of Courts Cindy Carpenter.
Carpenter came out strongly Tuesday, May 5, against countywide furloughs proposed by commissioners as a way of coping with new revenue shortfalls approaching $4 million this year.
“If they are seeking to furlough my employees, I have quite a problem with it,” Carpenter said. “Our workload is huge. We’re swamped.”
Carpenter said taking two weeks of leave without pay would devastate her employees, who make far less than those in the commissioners’ office.
She said commissioners have 30 percent of the county’s employees and have more than half of the salaries over $100,000. No one in her office makes more than $75,000, she said.
Commission President Donald Dixon said the furloughs are “just a concept,” and Carpenter and all the county’s elected officials are invited to a May 11 meeting to discuss ways to cut the budget. But he defended furloughs as better for workers than layoffs.
“Would you not be better off, no matter what you make,… to maybe lose a week’s worth of pay over a year rather than lose your job forever?” he said. “If we can’t come up with a solution to help us stretch the tax dollars, there’s going to be less people working at the county.”
Across-the-board cuts unfair, Carpenter says
Butler County Clerk of Courts Cindy Carpenter said she’s fed up with county commissioners enacting across-the-board measures to address revenue shortfalls, equally punishing careless spenders and penny-pinchers.
“They just need to figure out a way to be fair and equitable, it can’t be across the board,” she said.
She railed against furloughs that were proposed Monday night, May 4, after commissioners announced they were being optimistic when they laid off employees, slashed salaries and cut programs earlier this year anticipating a $7 million budget shortfall.
Now they face another $4 million gap, and are taking another look at cutting employee pay and health care costs before they resort to other measures.
But state law doesn’t allow counties to enact furloughs, even though that is what Gov. Ted Strickland did to help balance the state’s budget.
State Sen. Gary Cates, R-West Chester Twp., said he would submit an amendment to the state’s budget to give counties that power. As a budget amendment, the measure would only be in place for two years, until the next state budget.
If the governor can do it, Cates asked why counties shouldn’t be allowed.
“They have to balance their books like we do,” he said.
In addition to furloughs — which county Administrator Tim Williams said could save more than
$1 million a year — commissioners are seeking to reopen negotiations with the county’s 12 unions, representing 40 percent of the county’s 2,200 employees.
County Commissioner Gregory Jolivette wasn’t at Monday’s meeting, but said he supports the proposed furloughs and union negotiations. He said the county should pursue a salary freeze with the unions, with the potential of workers making some of the money back when a freeze is lifted.
“We’re running out of tools and we still have a bad forecast for the remaining year and next year,” he said. “We need to explore all options.”
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