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Commissioner Urban finds more 2009 carryover revenue. He believes layoffs could prevent any need for tax increase.
A closer review of Luzerne County finances on Tuesday led officials to project a smaller property tax hike than anticipated for 2010.
And one county commissioner believes a tax hike will be unnecessary if the county implements across-the-board layoffs at various times throughout the year.
Commissioners in November gave preliminary approval to a $127 million budget for 2010 that included an 18.5 percent property tax increase.
County officials recently said they thought the budget would increase to $130 million because an arbitrator-awarded increase in compensation to unionized employees at the county prison wasn’t figured in, and projected savings through furloughs could not be realized because the unions wouldn’t cooperate. That would cause the projected tax hike to increase to 23.5 percent.
After some initial review on Monday, Commissioner Steve Urban said he thought the proposal approved in November was understating carryover revenue from 2009.
He said budget and finance chief Tom Pribula reviewed data on Tuesday and found that unused revenue from 2009 that would carry over for use in 2010 would actually total about $9.8 million, rather than the $5.8 million initially projected.
Urban initially thought he found carryover revenue totaling $14.7 million, but he learned that some bills from 2008 were paid in 2009 because a bond issue to borrow money to pay them was held up in court.
Some of the carryover revenue would come from county departments that contribute to the county retirement plan, such as Transportation, Drug-and-Alcohol, Mental Health/Mental Retardation and Children and Youth, but that haven’t made their required annual payments to the county’s general fund, Urban said.
Urban said the county is waiting for a significant amount of reimbursement from the state for the Children and Youth department.
“The county has been making payroll for Children and Youth – over $4 million just in payroll that has not been reimbursed by the state,” Urban said.
He said state legislators’ and Gov. Ed Rendell’s failure to fix state money problems is hurting the county.
Urban also has said he wouldn’t give Commissioner Chairwoman Maryanne Petrilla a second and final vote on the budget without further deep cuts. New Commissioner Tom Cooney, who last week began filling the unexpired term of Greg Skrepenak, was still receiving information and updates on the budget on Tuesday.
Urban said he thinks the county could eliminate the need for any tax hike next year by closing down the entire courthouse for an average of one to two days per month or implementing some other combination of furlough days for all county employees. The courts would need to agree with the plan for it to work, he said.
Petrilla said she’s “open to anything that’s reasonable and achievable. I certainly don’t want to raise taxes,” she said.
But, Petrilla said, county solicitor Vito DeLuca researched the possibility of furloughs and found that the county’s union contracts and/or state law prohibit across-the-board layoffs and require that furloughs of union employees be based on seniority.
“(DeLuca) feels they would grieve it and they would win,” Petrilla said.
Urban said he finds that hard to believe, given that Columbia County has been implementing layoffs in that manner without any problems.
“How is Columbia County shutting down a couple days a month? Are the unions running this county or are the commissioners running this county? … I believe (union members’) attitude is: Let the taxpayers pay,” Urban said.
DeLuca did not return a message early Tuesday evening seeking comment.
WHAT’S NEXT
Luzerne County Commissioners are expected to cast final votes on the 2010 budget proposal at a meeting at 1 p.m. Thursday in their meeting room on the first floor of the courthouse, 200 N. River St., Wilkes-Barre. The meeting was initially scheduled for 10 a.m. today, but was postponed to allow officials more time to try to find more revenue sources and expenditure reductions.