Lane County Officials are sketching out a nightmare scenario in which the sheriff’s office will not respond to emergencies for four hours of every day, in which people lost in the forest will know no search and rescue team will look for them and in which accused rapists, murderers and arsonists will be released rather than jailed during their trials.
This scenario has been years in the making, yet as the county faces a $47 million budget cut as of July 1, we will all be in for a very rude awakening.
County budgeting department head David Garnick commented on the crisis, saying that some people are convinced that “you have to fly the plane into the ground first to make everyone believe that there is going to be a crash.” Up to this point Lane County has been unable, and even unwilling, to rectify the discrepancy between expectations and funding.
Since the Secure Rural Schools Act of 2002, dozens of western counties have depended on federal dollars to make up for a loss in tax revenue from reduced and restricted logging on federal land. Though this was a temporary measure, even after a one-year extension for the 2007-2008 fiscal year, counties and voters have failed to come up with a viable plan to make up for the loss.
Many taxpayers would argue that better management of the current property tax base, not new taxes, is the solution to the county’s crunch. However, according to a Lane County budget overview, only nine cents of every property tax dollar goes to Lane County. This amount represents about $32 million of the $68.5 million 2007-2008 budget, with the general fund and Secure Rural Schools funds each making up about $14 million dollars.
To compound the $14 million loss, Measures 5 and 50 restrict the rates at which property taxes can be increased, resulting in a structural loss of revenue of about 3 percent per year. Given this situation, the only two solutions are to either cut services or raise taxes.
Compared to other Oregon counties, Lane County actually has the lowest compound property tax rates, but voters have rejected the last 13 property and income tax measures that could provide the funding necessary to maintain the county services that residents expect. In past years, federal dollars made it possible to maintaub services, while this year the lack of sustainable revenue will correlate with painful cuts to county services.
According to Lane County Sheriff Russ Burger, a county of Lane’s size should have about 1,500 beds, yet under the new budget it will have only 28 beds. The county’s ability to deal with violent crime, drugs, search and rescue, emergency management and animal control will reflect similar degradation – or complete cuts – come July.
This will impact the quality of life in Lane County and given the reluctance of the federal government to keep funding counties – or to allow increased logging on federal lands – there will be no last minute salvation.
The burden, then, falls directly where it should. Lane County officials and taxpayers will have to determine if it is worse to develop a sales, income or property tax solution, or to deliberately allow county services, and the quality of life here, to crash and burn.
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