Lake County Council to cut $8.6 million, 54 jobs

But council members worry the toughest choices are ahead, as they try to find another $6.3 million to trim before a Dec. 1 deadline.

"The budgets we're looking at now, these are costs that are really dug in," said Councilman Larry Blanchard, R-Crown Point.

The council set out to cut $15 million from the 2009 budget because of an estimated $10.5 million the county will lose to property tax caps and millions more in revenue the state no longer will distribute to Lake County starting next year for property tax replacement credits.

The state instead will keep those funds to cover new state public education costs mandated by the General Assembly.

The council immediately reduced the 2009 budget by $4.5 million by shifting funds they had set aside in this year's budget in preparation for the impending shortfall.

Then they leaned on individual department heads to eliminate jobs and find other "permanent reductions" in their budgets. Those efforts have led to an additional $4.1 million in cuts.

"We can't have people offering to cut their office supply budgets, then coming back in the middle of the year to ask for more money for paper," Blanchard said. "What's gone has to stay gone or this won't work."

While department heads have come forward with steadily deeper cuts, Councilman Tom O'Donnell knows more has to be done in the next few weeks.

"We're going to hopefully give (department heads) all another pass at this, to see if they can find the cuts themselves, because nobody wants to go in and tell somebody how to run their department," O'Donnell, D-Dyer, said.

"If it comes to that, so be it, because these cuts have to be made," he said. "But we hope it won't."