Beaufort County has a spending problem, we don't have a shortage of revenue | Eastern North Carolina Now

    How do you think all those politicians in Washington, DC got to be so good at covering up how much money they are really spending? They learned how to do it in places like Little Washington, NC. As has been reported in the Observer, Beaufort County spending has gone up more than the 6 million dollars in the last four years. The tax rate was raised last year. Since the revaluation year of 2010, spending from property taxes has gone up a staggering 19.5 percent. Businesses and families are paying another dollar for every five paid in 2009. This is what happens when taxpayers allow boards of county commissioners to only talk about tax rates based on valuation and not the amount of revenue required to run local government.

    You need to remember, whenever they raise your taxes, either by raising the rate or the valuation of your property, you pay that higher tax each and every year after that. It is not a one-time increase. It hits us every year.

    Beaufort County does not have a "revenue" problem that would justify raising taxes or continuing the increases in taxes from prior years. What we have is a spending problem, just like we have in the "other" Washington.
This image is one of Commissioner Hood explaining just how it is, and how he personally exists, in "The Hood Territory."     photo by Stan Deatherage
    The current board is controlled by the Gang of Five (Cayton, Langley, McRoy, Booth and Klemm). They have consistently refused to cut spending. And they have increased the taxes small businesses have to pay at a time when nearly every small business has had to reduce its spending and cut costs. Meanwhile, over 2000 people in Beaufort County are out of work and probably three times that are working at a lower paying job than they did in 2009. But while businesses and people have had to cut their spending the Gang of Five has increased its spending by nearly 20%.

    Let me just point out one example of how the Gang of Five's spending is just like the stuff that goes on in the other Washington. They confiscate money from families and small businesses in this county and then give it away to special interests that they think will get them votes. In the case of the Chambers of Commerce the Gang of Five takes money from the small businesses who are not members of the Chamber and turns around and gives it to the Chamber of their choice. Why do we allow them to do such things? Would it not make more sense to simply allow those businesses to keep their tax money and decide whether joining their Chamber is what should be done with the money. And the same principles applies to most of the "non-profits" the Gang of Five give your money to.

    This is one of the reasons I have not voted to approve a budget for almost 15 years. The increased taxes collected from building improvements is budgeted and spent each year. This practice does not become a public issue because the Big Spenders try to fool us by talking only about the tax rate. In fact taxes are going up because the Commissioners are spending the increased revenue. My and Stan Deatherage' s objections to increased spending have been over-ruled each year by the Gang of Five. We have had spending increases every year without fail. It is happening to you again this year to the tune of more than one million dollars. And, your tax rate did not go up but your future tax commitment did.

    This is why continuation budgets are sinful. A continuation budget takes last year's budget and simply adds the increased spending.

    That is why it is easy to cut two million dollars out of this proposed budget. Let us start by dividing sales taxes with the cities in a way that is fair to all county residents, that is a 300,000 dollar saving . There are no businesses to be recruited and there will not be for some time, so let us shut down economic development at a savings of 250,000 dollars. We subsidize Beaufort Area Transportation with 50,000 dollars, culture and recreation is simply a vote buying gift to special interests, that is 50,000 dollars. We have always paid for increases in wages to county employees by finding off-setting spending reductions. For example, there are at least two departments that are over staffed. Let us do away with the 254,000 dollar COLA in these hard times and the 45,000 dollar increase in the 401k retirement. It is not right to confiscate more money from private employers to give to public employees when so many people have lost their jobs and many more are working for less than they were making a few years ago. Eliminate the donation to the Boys and Girls Club, 20,000 dollars. Reduce Sheriff spending by 250,000 dollars, the Community College by 200,000 dollars, the schools by 300,000 dollars, health department 100,000 dollars, social services by 100,000 dollars. Let the Manager and department heads determine which line items to cut to achieve these reductions in spending. The total of all of these is one million nine hundred thousand dollars. The total proposed budget is 51 million dollars. Other than the squawking about not being able to continue to spend, I'll bet no one would notice a reduction in services.

    The public never gets its moneys worth with continuation budgets. That is what we have done during the almost 16 years I have served as a commissioner. The Gang of Five is simply not willing to work hard enough to thoroughly look at these budgets, such as industry would to make sure we are only spending money on what we need. The majority of the commissioners have never worked in industry. The various county department heads are under no compulsion to make the board aware of inefficiencies, they probably built them into their operations. The public should note that when Stan Deatherage and I raise issues there is an obvious effort to circle the wagons to protect commissioners from having to examine the issue. Any reference that something needs attention is put down quickly. I have advocated that the board appoint three commissioner committees in order to thoroughly examine departments to make sure they are running efficiently. We do not have adequate oversight. The Gang of Five refuses to do that. As a result we continue to have one spending scandal after another. And we will continue to have these scandals until the Board of Commissioners provides the proper oversight of county spending.

    But another way to fix this problem is to not re-elect the Gang of Five. We need to begin doing that in November and finish the job in the next election.