In a local government of, for and by the people, the Lane County budget crisis demonstrates a major breakdown in these seemingly unbreakable bonds between public officials and tax-funded public services.
In May 2007 Lane County, along with dozens of other counties, received a one year extension of the federal funding that was meant to temporarily replace lost logging revenue. With this funding, Lane County was given the better part of a decade to visualize and enact a budget and tax plan that would account for the loss of approximately $47 million – about 8 percent of the total budget.
With less than two months until the 2008-2009 fiscal year begins, and with a reduced budget, the transition is going to be abrupt and painful.
The impact on public health and public safety will be severe. Cuts to the Sheriff’s and District Attorney’s Offices will result in the release of violent offenders, uninvestigated property theft cases and four hours each day without sheriff’s deputies available for patrol.
To put all this in perspective, Lane County will be left with only 48 beds in the county jail. This is about 3 percent of the capacity required for a county with Lane’s population to house individuals arrested on felony charges.
Cuts to the Youth Services and the Health and Human Services Departments will make those departments less able to provide proactive intervention that can help at-risk community members avoid criminal behavior. A loss of capacity to offer counseling and rehabilitation to individuals, especially Lane County’s youth, will only worsen a situation that the county justice system already cannot handle. All these abrupt cuts to county services are likely to have a noticeable impact on the quality of life here in Lane County.
Some county commissioners have voiced the sentiment that only a turn for the worse will eventually bring about a real solution when residents are sufficiently outraged about the situation. More than a dozen attempts to enact new taxes to make up for the $47-million shortfall have been defeated by county voters. The federal government is very unlikely to allow another last-minute extension of funding – as it did with money tied to a war funding bill last year. Given an absence of these funding streams, trimming the budget is the last option, and either that will be the
solution, or it will initiate a solution.
Last week it was reported that Eugene and Lane County are beginning to explore some creative solutions. One proposal would have the city provide up to $1.5 million from its general fund to the county, which would then use this to help fund public safety and other critical services. In exchange, the county would transfer a comparable dollar amount from its road fund to the city.
Lane County already receives about $9 million a year from Oregon Department Of Transportation for county roads, and the fund currently has substantial reserves, thanks in part to Senate Bill 994. The bill was passed last summer, and doles out an additional $56 million of ODOT funds to Oregon’s 36 counties. This emergency funding was meant to help counties offset lost timber dollars, and the proposed city-county fund exchange is just the sort of solutions that need to
be implemented.
However, such maneuvers will not make up for the entire shortfall, and county residents will need to take it upon themselves to ensure there is the proper mix of tax base and efficient budgeting. As many times as we have voted down new taxes, this summer we will have to decide if low taxes are worth a loss of services and safety.