Budget Practicalities

When he requested that the Board of County Commissioners ask the state to open scallop season early County Commissioner Warren Yeager cited this as a unique year, given the Deepwater Horizon oil leak.

Given the leak, opening the season for scallop harvesting didn’t seem that big a deal, Yeager said.

And if ever there was a year to provide significant property tax relief this would be the year.

And, yes, that will be a tough slog.

Nearly one quarter of the county’s property tax base in 2009 is likely to disappear this year, just as a quarter of the tax base disappeared between 2008 and 2009.

The Florida Legislature did local governments no favor in balancing its spending plan by slashing health department budgets, programs for seniors and libraries, cutting the Department of Corrections and a host of other agencies and safety net programs. And they still found room for tens of millions of dollars in pork projects that did not go through normal budget channels and are strictly local in nature.

When county commissioners note the budget appears “terrible” – as several did last week – they are not whistling in the wind.

And Mr. Yeager was correct when he said county commissioners should wait on a budget committee’s recommendation for possible cuts and to insist that departments operate in a zero-based vacuum. That is starting every budget at zero and adding only those dollars that are essential to fulfilling basic government services.

Determining what constitutes "basic services of government" deserves a full and public airing, an entire town hall meeting in itself as commissioners and residents search for a grasp on a new reality.

And taxpayers could rightly question spending priorities for their hard-earned dollars in recent years.

A candy purchase for last Christmas’s parade in Wewahitchka and the ongoing Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation into the former director of the Gulf County EMS spotlight nagging questions about how county credit cards are used and by whom.

The county continues use tax dollars to contest what to date has been a losing court case involving enforcement of its own comprehensive plan land-use regulations. An appellate court also mandated a remedy to the filling of wetlands along a bay that the county is now battling with an oil spill to preserve, another twist of irony to a case that has spanned years.

The fact that the county budgets $60,000 a year for legal fees and the final number bulges over the line every year says volumes about spending priorities.

Meanwhile, some question if the county is compromising its ability to litigate against BP for damages given that four commissioners or the companies they work for have direct ties to work contracted by BP.

What if a motion surfaced to take action against BP, and there weren't enough commissioners without a conflict for a second? Could it mean damage to the county's tax rolls or sales tax or bed tax revenue might be in jeopardy? If so, that could be seen as the commissioners taking more of an interest in their personal well being than the county and the constituents they are elected to serve.

Again and again commissioners and county staff attest that BP is doing everything asked of it by the county, but should that not be a given since it is the company’s spill, the company’s responsibility to meet the costs of damages the leak will wreak on the Gulf Coast?

County taxpayers deserve similar support and praise. They have footed the bill for a historic increase in spending the early part of this decade and continue to wait for the cost of living in the county charged by commissioners to substantially retreat.

Commissioners have whittled, but whittling away at the budgetary Redwood tree constructed over five years is insufficient and two commissioners should understand that well.

While one of their peers owns no property – therefore not exactly feeling the pain of taxpayers – two commissioners were on the delinquent tax roll, one threatened with the loss of property to the auction block next month.

The delinquent tax rolls themselves provided pages of pain for commissioners to peruse. Yes, market forces are at work also, but taxpayers can rightly point to commissioners who spent for years as if a rainy day would never come only to see it arrive and fail to adapt accordingly.

This is indeed, as Mr. Yeager noted, a unique year.

And taxpayers can only cling to the hope they will see leadership and fiscal responsibility that is unique in comparison to what has been witnessed in recent weeks, months and years.