Richardson makes fruitless attempt to cut spending, tax rate | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Beaufort County property owners should start preparing to pay higher taxes next year, as Beaufort County commissioners failed to agree on even one spending cut at last night’s budget workshop meeting in Washington.

    Commissioner Hood Richardson presented to the board, at the previous budget workshop on May 18, $1,098,000 of the $2,191,701 in cuts needed to avoid a tax increase. Richardson challenged the other six commissioners to locate the remaining $1.1 million of expendable expenditures, giving them an assignment to each find an extra $188,000 in cuts during the week.

    Not only did the board come to last night’s workshop empty handed—even fellow conservative Commissioner Stan Deatherage said Richardson had already found “all the low hanging fruit”—but all of them except Deatherage consistently refused to raise a hand when it came time to vote for the cuts.

Richardson and Deatherage raise their hands to vote for one of the nine proposed budget cuts at last night's Beaufort County budget workshop in Washington.
    Any benefit of having a 4-3 Republican majority was nullified by the unexpected move by Republican commissioners Jay McRoy and Al Klemm to vote against the spending cuts along with the three Democratic commissioners. At the May 10 regularly scheduled commissioner meeting, when County Manager Paul Spruill presented his recommended budget for the 2010-2011 fiscal year, both McRoy and Klemm pledged to do everything in their power to lower spending and maintain a revenue neutral tax rate.

    “We’ve preached this for the last months that—to the public—we were going to make this a revenue neutral rate, and if you don’t stick to your word, people don’t have any confidence in you,” said McRoy. “And, you know, so, to that end, you know, I want to try to get to the revenue neutral rate as much as possible.”

    At the regularly scheduled May meeting, Klemm spoke about the continued prospect of the loss of sales tax revenue, due to underemployment, the sure finality of stimulus funding in the next two years, the upcoming cost to the county from mandated state programs, and the financial burden of the Beaufort County Medical Center and the importance of preparing for these eventualities.

    “I don’t know what kind of statement to make at this point, but I think we’re in about as scary of a situation right now as I can imagine, because of what could happen next year,” he said. “We need to look at this very, very carefully, because the wrong decision just put us down the wrong road.”

    The five votes against spending cuts were so unexpected that Democratic Commissioner Jerry Langley predicted, at the regularly scheduled meeting, that he would be the only commissioner among both parties who wasn’t driven to reach that revenue neutral target.

    “I’m probably going to be the lone ranger in my thinking, but I’m gonna be upfront and honest with everybody,” he said. “That proposed revenue neutral tax rate—I’m not for it.”

    Before the votes were cast, Democratic Commissioner Robert Cayton set the tone of last night’s workshop by making a motion to end the discussion on spending cuts and accept the recommended budget.

    Though this motion did not pass, the board went on, in effect, to accept the specifications of the recommended budget in their entirety, by voting 5-2 against the following spending cuts: $250,000 in recalculated sales tax distribution (reduced from the originally proposed $350,000), a $95,000 cut to the Economic Development Commission, a $30,000 cut to Cooperative Extension, a $30,000 cut to the Beaufort Area Transit System (reduced from the originally proposed $50,000), a $20,000 cut to the Boys and Girls Club, a $2,000 cut to Pamlico Pals, a $100,000 cut to Beaufort County Community College and a $100,000 cut to the Beaufort County Sheriff Department.

    The board refrained from voting on Richardson’s proposed $240,000 cut to county personnel, which would result in six layoffs. When asked after the meeting when that item will be voted on, Richardson was said it was up to the other commissioners.

    “We won’t revisit it unless I get a commitment from them that they’re interested in reducing cost,” he said.

    There was one instance in which Deatherage voted along with the others against one of Richardson’s proposed spending cuts: a $25,000 cut to the county’s forest fire prevention office. He also took issue with Richardson’s lumping of various county funded cultural and recreational programs into one $86,000 cut, and asked that these programs be broken down and voted on line-by-line at the next budget workshop. Deatherage traditionally supports a measure of county funding for recreation.


    In a clear sign of frustration with the board’s non-action, Richardson thwarted the county’s attempt to plan the next budget workshop.

    “I’m not interested in discussing the budget again because the commissioners aren’t interested in saving the public’s money,” said Richardson. “I don’t want to waste my time, I’ve got enough to do with the hospital.”

    The public will have a chance to voice their opinions about the recommended budget at a public hearing in late June, according to Spruill. There is still a chance the commissioners will make some cuts to the budget, though momentum is not favoring this outcome.