$3 million legal fund eyed to offset cuts
By Denise Jewell Gee
November 11, 2011
County Executive Chris Collins in September put together a $1.05 billion budget proposal for 2012 that assumed he would be in office to carry out his priorities.
He proposed cutting more than 200 jobs in the Social Services Deparment, along with no funding for small arts and cultural organizations, and no rat control.
Executive-elect Mark C. Poloncarz is already eyeing changes to some of those lines. He sees $3 million that Collins wants to set aside for legal settlements and fees as a place to start.
“There are other departments and other fringe benefit lines that we think are excessively high, that there doesn’t seem to be justification for,” Poloncarz said. “Those could be reduced, and that funding source could be used for other services like arts and culturals, like rodent control, like some of the cuts that he’s instituted in Social Services.”
County lawmakers will begin a series of budget hearings next week amid a changing political landscape that will put Democrats in charge of the county executive’s office and the Legislature in January.
But until then, Collins will continue to have veto power and a Legislature that last year couldn’t muster the votes to override his budget vetoes.
Poloncarz said he plans to submit recommendations to the Legislature for changes he would like to see made before the budget is finalized in December. As county comptroller, his office issued a budget review last month that questioned some of Collins’ budget proposals.
“I would hope that they would follow some of our recommendations,” Poloncarz said. “And I would also hope that Mr. Collins wouldn’t just veto them, that he would understand that, going forward, I have to have the ability to run county government.”
A spokesman indicated Thursday that Collins would be willing to consider changes. “The county executive will honor the budgetary spending changes made by the Legislature with input from the incoming administration, as long as those changes do not result in a property tax increase,” said Grant Loomis, a Collins spokesman.
The budget, as proposed by Collins, would increase spending by less than 1 percent and would keep property taxes flat.
Collins said when he released his budget proposal in late September that the spending plan contained no “extra money.”
“If somebody’s going to go through my budget and put this money back in, they’re going to raise property taxes,” Collins told The Buffalo News in an article on funding for small arts and cultural groups last month. “And if someone says, ‘I’ll find the money somewhere else,’ that’s a cheap shot. Where is it? Show me.”
Poloncarz’s office last month released a budget review that, among other recommendations, suggested that county legislators reduce the $3 million Collins wants to set aside for the “risk retention fund” next year. The budget line is used for legal settlements and attorney fees. Poloncarz’s staff said the fund already contained $6.8 million that could be carried over.
Legislator Lynn Marinelli, D-Town of Tonawanda, said she expects Poloncarz “should be able to put an imprint on the budget that he’s managing.”
But she doesn’t anticipate major changes to the budget proposal as legislators work within the constraints of state mandates, health care increases and a new 2 percent state limit on the tax levy.
The Legislature next week has budget hearings before proposing changes.
http://www.buffalonews.com/city/communities/erie-county/article628294.ece