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Confrontation awaits county budget

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By Josh Sweigart, Staff Writer 9:29 PM Monday, November 2, 2009

HAMILTON — “We’re in for a hell of a confrontation,” Butler County Commissioner Gregory Jolivette said at the end of a budget meeting Monday, Nov. 2.

This was in response to 2010 budgets still trickling into the county commissioners office after the deadline Friday Oct. 30. The budgets from other elected offices around the county were supposed to include cuts to address a recession-wrought deficit estimated at $6.6 million.

Many of them did. But some officeholders with the largest budgets refused to make the cuts. At least one apparently increased their budget.

County Finance Director Pete Landrum said Monday the board of elections appears to be asking for a $1 million budget increase, instead of a $305,193 decrease.

“I don’t know if it’s something with special elections, or several of them next year,” he said. “Even compared to other years of that kind (including a gubernatorial election) it’s above” average.

This followed an announcement last week that Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones — whose budget accounts for more than a third of the general fund — is refusing to make the more than $2.5 million budget cut requested from his office, citing concerns about public safety.

County Prosecutor Robin Piper — who oversees one of the other larger budgets in the county — is one of many departments still crunching numbers, slowed by a new computer system the county enacted this year.

But he said the closer he gets to the $428,774 cut requested by commissioners — worth up to 10 jobs, he said — the more he worries about the impacts to services.

“Any time I’m not there to help law enforcement, any time I’m not there to aggressively prosecute cases, that’s not a good thing for the community,” Piper said. “The ultimate result of that is jeopardizing the safety and well being of the citizens in the community.”

“I’ve heard rumblings that not everyone is complying (with proposed cuts),” Jolivette told his fellow commissioners Monday. “What are we going to do about it?”

The answer was unclear. The ad-hoc county budget commission — formed this year by elected officeholders to advise commissioners on addressing the budget crisis — has suggested sending back budgets that don’t comply.

But Commission President Donald Dixon only expressed frustration that the county hadn’t already come up with a plan.

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