Butler County set to pass structurally balanced $97.9M budget

Despite several outside influences putting pressure on finances, Butler County commissioners are poised to pass a structurally balanced $97.9 million budget for 2018.

Among those challenges, according to Butler County Finance Director Tawana Keels is a loss of $3.2 million in Medicaid managed care sales tax. Sales taxes have been increasing in the seven percent to nine percent range since 2012, but are expected to tumble by 3.1 percent next year because of the Medicaid tax loss, she said.

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She said unless a promised legislative fix comes through, the loss going forward will be $3.2 million or more, because those tax receipts would have continued to grow.

“Please remember 2019 and the out years it’s $3 million-plus,” she said. “Had this not occurred we would have had a structurally balanced budget based on submissions and we wouldn’t have had to go through the cuts and reductions we went through.”

Butler County Commissioner T.C. Rogers said he attended a county commissioners meeting last week and there won’t be a fix.

“The MCO money, we’re not going to get any more,” he said. “That’s gone.”

Keels said the budget submissions from office holders and various departments and agencies came in just over $100 million for the general fund, but revenues are only expected to reach $97.9 million.

The budget requests were also $4.8 million over the 2017 budget, for things like the Motorola public safety radios — the radio system is $10 million but only $1 million is coming out of the general fund — $366,671 for additional Board of Elections staffing for the gubernatorial race and $1 million for raises.

MORE: Half-price emergency radios available, but will Butler County jurisdictions buy?

Not too long ago double-digit and multiple raises per year were the norm in the county, until the commissioners reigned them in and instituted a pay-for-performance plan that sets limits on compounding increases. Commissioner Don Dixon said had they not done that — with sales tax loss and other unfunded mandates putting pressure on the budget — the budget picture for next year would look much different.

“We need to make it very clear that this payroll plan that we have was a combination of our office holders and our employees and the commissioners,” Dixon said. “We don’t want to get into a position to where you would have the sort of cuts we’re looking at right now, if we had not had this plan in place we would be looking at layoffs right now.”

To get to a structurally balanced budget — where they don’t dip into reserves to balance the books — Keels had to cut $2.2 million out of the general fund budget. The bulk came from cutting $1 million off the standard budget stabilization allotment of $2 million and another $1 million out of capital projects.

Keels received $12 million in requests for capital expenditures, the commissioners next week are expected to approve $1 million. But she said those figures are a little deceiving.

“Of the $12 million we’ve already started or completed about $8.4 million because the communication system was part of that,” she said. “So we’re granting about $1 million and have about $2.6 (million) yet to complete.”

RELATED: More unfunded state mandates to impact Butler County budget

There is also a major unknown that will impact the budget next year, due to a new state law that prohibits judges from sending low level, non-violent felony five offenders to prison. County officials won’t know what that impact will be until they see how many people will need to remain here either in the jail or in other programs, when the law takes effect next summer.

The common pleas court was the only office that could semi-prepare by extending the office hours staff work. They are going from 35 to 37.5 hours next year at a cost of $245,758, for additional offender court supervision.

Earlier this year Common Pleas Court Administrator Wayne Gilkison said when the law was passed as part of the state’s biennial budget there were an estimated 197 prison inmates who under this new legislation, would have been sentenced to the Butler County Jail, as opposed to prison. Those people, along with about 250 potential probation violators, and any new eligible felony five offenders could cost the county $2.7 million to $3.8 million.

The general fund is known as the operational fund but the total budget — including departments and agencies with their own tax levies and enterprise funds — with all funds included is set for almost $432 million.

The commissioners are scheduled to approve the new spending plan Monday.


Butler County 2018 budget by the numbers:

Total general fund: $97.9 million

Increased expenditures over 2017 budget: $4.8 million

Budget cuts made to get to structural balance: $2.9 million

Total budget all funds: $432 million

Source: Butler County Finance Department

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