Bill Dolan, Times of Northwest Indiana
bill.dolan@nwi.com
CROWN POINT | Lake County officials have balanced their 2010 budget, give or take a couple of million dollars.
However, the millions in salary and job reductions are only on a spreadsheet at the moment. The next three months will bring the flesh and blood cuts.
Dante Rondelli, the council's finance director, said department heads have until year's end to reduce their staffs, or the council could do it for them in the coming year.
And county employees can expect still more losses from their ranks this time next year thanks to a convergence of state-mandated property tax ceilings and other government revenues that have gone south with the economy.
"What if we passed an income tax?" County Councilman Thomas O'Donnell asked recently during a meeting of county officials to discuss the budget crisis.
Neither O'Donnell nor his fellow council members were interested in passing a tax, but O'Donnell wanted to air out and discard the General Assembly's demand that Lake County shift its revenue base from property to at least a 1 percent tax on the personal income of residents and workers.
On cue, Rondelli rose to the attack.
"It wouldn't just be a 1 percent tax. It would be multiple percentages, 2 percent or 3 percent at least. And it wouldn't stop the progression of government wanting more money," he said.
About two-thirds of county and township department heads and similar officials have declined to make the full 15 percent reductions in current spending levels as the council asked. The voluntary cuts only add up to $7.5 million, not the $11.8 million in the council edict. And the job cuts totaled 60, not the 150 expected by the council.
O'Donnell said last week, "The rumor is that we will back down, but this is a different day."
In 2007, Indiana legislators passed a law freezing the property tax levies for all local governments but schools in Lake County until the County Council adopts a 1 percent income tax dedicated to reducing property taxes. Lake County, which historically has been home to some of the highest property tax rates in the state, is the only one of Indiana's 92 counties without a local income tax.