Treasurer Doesn’t Like Budget Cut Commissioners Ask 1% Reduction For Rainy Day

Spokane County Treasurer Linda Wolverton is protesting plans by county commissioners to trim her budget and those of other departments by nearly 1 percent.

Money needs to be saved between now and year’s end, commissioners said Tuesday, to beef up the county’s rainy-day fund.

Commissioners also have found a temporary solution to budget woes plaguing law and justice agencies.

They will transfer $305,000 from reserves in the building department to pay for overtime in the sheriff’s department and jail, as well as rising costs in Superior Court and the public defender’s office.

County commissioners are expected to hold a public hearing on the budget cuts Sept. 19, but the cuts are pretty much a given. Even Wolverton concedes commissioners “have total control over budget cuts.”

All general fund departments except those in law and justice will be asked to shoulder a cut of about eight-tenths of a percent to raise $226,664 by the end of the year.

The county reserve fund is nearly gone, said county budget and finance director Marshall Farnell.

“I don’t believe this is onerous,” he said. “It’s less than 1 percent. It will have a minimal, minimal impact on departments.”

Wolverton said it’s too much, though, particularly in light of deeper cuts going back to 1990.

This is the second time this year, she said, that commissioners have levied cuts on well-run departments even though they have lived within their budgets.

Last spring, commissioners awarded 3 percent employee pay raises but only paid for 2 percent. That meant departments had to cut their operations by 1 percent.

“This is the second time they’ve been back this year to ask us to bail them out for their overspending,” Wolverton said. “You can throw money at criminal justice on a local level until you-know-what freezes over, and it’s not going to make a difference.

“That’s a problem that can only be solved at the state level,” she said.

Wolverton said she solved her first budget crisis in 1995 by leaving a customer service job half-filled.

“I had to work the telephone six weeks because I had that position empty during tax rush,” Wolverton said.

Farnell noted that the cuts are relatively minor; for example, Wolverton’s hit is $8,240. The biggest hit is in the prosecutor’s office - $29,457.

Meanwhile, commissioners will go almost halfway to meet a $694,000 shortfall by law and justice agencies.

They’ll take $305,000 in developerfunded reserves in the building department. That department in 1990 left the general fund and became a free enterprise endeavor by raising its own revenues.

It still will have nearly $1 million left in its reserve account, Farnell said.

, DataTimes