Lou’s Dog & Pony Show

16 February 2010 @ 0:01 | Posted in » New Jersey, Politics

Last night was the first Cumberland County budget review meeting. It was held at the administrative building in Bridgeton. The Finance Committee sat with a few other freeholders. Then Kim Wood, P.J. Paten, Lizbeth Hernandez, and Nancy Sungenis sat down and presented the budgets for the freeholders to scrutinize.

Freeholder Director Lou Magazzu ran the meeting. I was pleased to see that he permitted the public (about a dozen folks) to ask questions at the end of each department.

What was painfully obvious to me is that budgeting at the county level is not a serious endeavor.

Presumably the impetus for opening these meetings to the public is to ensure taxpayers that county government is serious about cutting the budget in these “unprecedented fiscal times”, as Magazzu called the financial bind the county is in. Yet, only the Board Elections department presented a budget that reduced spending from the current budget, and that is a bit dubious as you will see below.

Planning & Development
Ms. Wood presented both the Planning & Development Department’s budget and that of Tourism. All we were presented with were the items in the Other Expenditure budgets. Salary and wages were not addressed until I asked about them. Planning & Budget has a $199,475 proposal on the table. This year’s budget is $196,915. So, right off the bat this department has not understood that it needs to cut. A flat budget doesn’t help, cuts are needed.

Hampering this department is $90,000 for a consultant. There is a line item of $50,000 under the Millenium Commission. Another $16,000 is listed under Professional Services. It was unclear whether all of the $16K would be directed to the consultant. That leaves at least $24,000 not budgeted at all for the consultant.

What would that consultant do for $90,000? He would write the Open Space plan for the county. Cumberland County taxpayers have been paying an open space tax for years, yet the county has no plan. Mrs. Swift pointed out that with an open space plan the county would be eligible for matching grants. But of course, without a plan, no matching funds are going to come.

What to do? There’s talk of writing a two-year proposal for the work so the appropriation can be spread over two budgets. Ms. Wolf stated the plan could not be done in-house. I wonder why that is. That would be a way to eliminate the $66,000 from the budget and not worry about the remaining money. There’s also talk of asking municipalities to sign on as partners. I do not see that happening as this is a county plan.

What is clear is that this proposed budget was presented without all projects accounted for. There is money requested for tourism advertising under this budget that should be in the Tourism budget. There is $10,000 to make up for lost money from the Cultural Heritage funds that the state stopped. My understanding is this $10,000 is to cover salary. Other money in this area go to fund artists’ groups, it was explained.

There’s $6500 for conference fees. There’s money for the Rails to Trails program. As much as I favor that program, perhaps this year isn’t the year to spend any money on it.

Of course, salaries were not discussed at all. I asked what that line item was. Fourteen employees making $657,000 oversee these nearly $200,000 in projects. That does not include health benefits and pension payments. I was quoted that was an additional 45% of the salary figure.

Tourism
The Tourism department’s budget is proposed as $5000 more than this year’s. That is equal to the amount that the county has been kicking in for fireworks at the County Fair. This also includes the annual $20,000 gift to the Cohanzick Zoo. Not to be lost is $2900 for food for dinner meetings with volunteers. If one cannot get volunteers without feeding them, then so be it.

Veteran Affairs
P.J. Paten presented a $31,000 budget for next year despite having not spent more than $24,000 in any of the last three years. She was instructed to reduce her budget to $25,000 by Magazzu. Then someone else (I didn’t get his name, but he seemed to work for the county in the budgeting department) suggested $27,00-$28,000. That was to ensure a cushion in case something went wrong.

It was then that it became clear that this meeting was not about overhauling the budget. Mrs. Swift had informed the board that without the underlying expenditures, the category totals meant nothing. She is correct.

There is a $3000 departmental supplies line item that Ms. Paten claimed was the ~~slush~~ fund she uses when issues come up. Taxpayers are paying $11,000 annually to place flags on the graves of veterans. And there is a $50,750 salary (2009) plus 45% for the one employee (presumably Ms. Paten) to administer all this.

Board of Elections
Last up was the Board of Elections. At least they walked in having already cut their Other Expenditure budget by 5%. Even so, they are asking for $702,500, which is $42,000 more than the highest year (presidential election) in the last three, and $150,000 more than this past year. Arbitrarily, Magazzu and Shepard decided to cut this by $50,000. That still comes in $100,000 more than this year.

There are five employees (one open position that may not be filled) that is making $285,057 this year. Of course, there is the 45% extra for health and pension benefits. The total salary and wages is $328,307. That includes $20,000 in budgeted overtime, $20,000 for budgeted part time help, and $3,500 for seniority pay.

It was evident that the county does not have a thorough budget process. Each department is coming in with inflated budgets that are being “cut” to make it look like sacrifice is occurring. Yet, the budgets are still, for the most part, greater than this year’s budget, and certainly not pared down in this time of financial trouble. That does not reduce the tax levy.

Matt Dunn asked me what I thought of this after the meeting. I related to him that it was like cutting the pencils and paper from a school budget. Sure, it’ll save some cash, but if one is going to prune $4-8 million, salaries have to be addressed. That discussion was off the table this evening.