It’s not quite a train wreck—yet—but if Schoharie County’s proposed $90 million 2019 budget keeps hurtling down the same track, Treasurer Bill Cherry sees disaster ahead.
Not so fast, counters Administrator Steve Wilson, whose own calculations show the budget isn’t anywhere close to derailing, not in 2019 and not in 2020, and who called Mr. Cherry’s forecast “extravagant” and “speculative.”
Supervisors are expected to adopt the budget Monday.
As the budget now stands, if they use $2.5 million from the $14 million fund balance to make the ’19 budget work, the tax increase will be 3.7 percent; if they use $2.8 million from the fund balance, the tax increase would be about 2.3 percent.
But it’s all smoke and mirrors, according to Mr. Cherry who estimates supervisors will really need $4.4 million from the fund balance by mid-2019—and another $4.4 million again in 2020--to keep the county running.
Mr. Cherry takes issues with what he sees as a lack of transparency in drafting and revising the budget—a process that in the past has involved multiple public hearings and debate as supervisors worked their way through the spending plan page-by-page and line-by-line and for that, he faults supervisors.
But he also said Mr. Wilson’s budget doesn’t adequately reflect the costs of staffing the new jail; more than $1.2 million in benefits for 35 new positions—including 24 new corrections officers at the jail--was missing, he said, and even after supervisors added back $600,000 to cover some of that cost, it still leaves them at least $400,000 short.
The proposed budget also doesn’t include anything for likely CSEA raises, Mr. Cherry said, which at a rough estimate of two percent each for 2018 and 2019, equals $1.2 million, for a total of $4.4 million—fund balance, benefits, and CSEA raises—that “can only come from one place, the fund balance.”
“The numbers don’t lie,” he said.
No they don’t, agrees Mr. Wilson, but “Bill’s making a bunch of assumptions” and using different numbers to reach his conclusions.
“I don’t think there’s a $400,000 gap” in the benefits increase, Mr. Wilson said, because he and supervisors’ Finance Committee used a different, and he argues, more realistic formula to calculate health insurance.
In fact, he doesn’t think there will end up being a gap at all.
As for the CSEA, Mr. Wilson said it would be foolhardy to budget for raises and tip the county’s hand.
Negotiations have already restarted, he said, and if there’s a settlement, the county has a few options to fund raises: turning to the fund balance, yes, but also using possible ’18 budget surpluses or the New York Power Authority settlement.
“I think we have plenty of sources of funds,” he said, “and I think Bill’s numbers are speculative.”
Whether they are or aren’t, taking what he’s convinced could be $4.4 million from the $14 million fund balance “isn’t the end of the world,” Mr. Cherry said—except supervisors will need to match it with another $4.4 million from the fund balance in 2020 just to stay even and still another $2.6 million to cover increases in overall spending.
There’s still time to stave off disaster, Mr. Cherry said--by convincing the Department of Corrections to require as many as a dozen fewer guards at the new jail and not hiring the 11 other CSEA employees.
But Mr. Wilson said he has worked to cut the number of corrections officers and though it’s unlikely DOC will go any lower, “There will be room to negotiate—down or up—all the way up until the jail opens,” he said.
“Bill is wrong when he says that this is the way it must be.”
No, he’s not, Mr. Cherry maintains; after 25 years spent “trying to protect county finances, now I’m about to leave at the end of next year and it’s about to go all to hell. I can see the freight train coming.”