With finance managers predicting a gargantuan budget deficit, Fulton County government leaders last year said 2012 would see tough decisions on cuts to avoid raising taxes.
But when they convened to formulate a budget, spending went up rather than down.
Amid incessant bickering and last-minute deal making, projected costs swelled by $7.8 million between the first budget proposed in November and the one approved Wednesday.
The plan includes $3.9 million for lower-level employee bonuses, $2.6 million on a new south Fulton health clinic, $750,000 for a new economic development division with five new positions, $300,000 to stage programs at the Wolf Creek Amphitheater and $200,000 for medications for AIDS patients. Money was shifted to restore $430,500 in cuts to senior services.
Overall, the $605.4 million budget is up 8 percent from 2011 spending levels. Last year’s spending came in $42 million below the budgeted $600.6 million, thanks to a hiring freeze and other tightening measures by the county manager.
While taxes are not going up, this year’s budget uses reserves to plug a projected $82 million gap between costs and expected revenue.
“They talk a good game, there’s just no action,” said Bernie Tokarz, a member of Commissioner Liz Hausmann’s north Fulton budget committee that suggested $5 million in potential cuts, none of which were adopted. “I think that’s what’s disappointing to residents.”
But cutting government services can be difficult.
Buckhead resident Allen Breaux, one of more than 40 people who spoke against proposed cuts at Wednesday’s hearing, told of losing his catering business in Hurricane Katrina, being airlifted to Atlanta, then being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and battling depression. He’s now a regular user of the exercise programs at the Benson senior complex in Sandy Springs.
“I became a member, and it’s changed my life,” Breaux said. “My passion is back.”
Commissioner Bill Edwards, who supported much of the new spending, blamed his colleagues for voting to pay $3.9 million to Grady Memorial Hospital last year despite contract noncompliance, spending $2 million to fight inmate recidivism with no clear plan and creating the economic development division when most of the county is covered by cities.
The south Fulton health center is needed because Grady shut down two neighborhood clinics last year, Edwards said. The Wolf Creek concerts will generate revenue, he said, and the bonuses will improve morale.
“If they want to call my stuff additional spending, too bad,” he said. “I think it’s what’s right.”
Katherine Willoughby, a professor of public management and policy at Georgia State University, said that with the slow economic recovery, governments should be focusing on basic services and finding ways to tighten, not handing out millions in bonuses.
“What we see here is politics and not rationality,” she said.
Though the board didn’t raise taxes countywide, it approved a 1.5 mill rate increase in unincorporated south Fulton’s special tax for city-type services. The countywide tax rate, which funds libraries, health services, social programs, the courts system and the jail, among other things, has been declining for the past 15 years. It’s been at 10.281 mills -- $720 on a $250,000 house with a homestead exemption -- since 2007.
That’s in addition to various city, school and state tax rates.
After plugging Fulton’s $82.1 million shortfall with reserves, the rainy day fund will still hold $50.3 million, which is 8.3 percent of expenses, or the industry standard of one-month’s operating expenses.
Commission Chairman John Eaves said he’s committed to holding tax rates where they are and agreed the commission must change tactics in coming years. He said he will call for a forensic audit of operations. The board should also look for operations that can be outsourced and whether some health services can be merged with Grady Health System, he said.
“Next year, I’m going to be pushing for a more deliberate process,” the chairman said.
Eaves was among the four commissioners who voted for the bonuses, which will go to all workers earning $59,542 or less, spread out in 26 paychecks and amounting to less than $80 per month for about 4,000 employees. He said that if he hadn’t supported that, he wouldn’t have had the four votes needed to pass the budget.
The process was marked by frequent clashes along party and north-south lines.
At one point Edwards, Robb Pitts and Vice Chair Emma Darnell assailed Hausmann for giving her chief of staff a $9,000 pay raise to $97,300 a year, making him the highest paid staffer among all seven commissioners’ offices.
Hausmann said she reduced her staff from three to two people and feels her chief adviser earns his pay with an extra work load. Her office’s $397,656 budget is the lowest among the commissioners.
Her fellow Northside commissioner, Tom Lowe, proposed a 5.8 percent property tax rate hike this year to avoid a larger hike in 2013 or 2014, but all six of his colleagues opposed him. Finance Director Patrick O’Connor has warned of dwindling revenues and reserves, and Lowe said he was trying to sound an alarm.
“It’s already ringing,” he said. “It just hasn’t shook some of them out of their seats.”
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