County officials attempting to accomplish more with less

DUSTIN ENSINGER

Staff Writer

Do more with less is a com­mon mantra from state-level politi­cians these days, and Delaware County offi­cials are try­ing to do just that.

Faced with steep cuts in fund­ing from the state and fed­eral level, offi­cials say they are still try­ing to pro­vide the same or even greater lev­els of service.

Despite los­ing about $100,000 in grant fund­ing over the past year for spe­cial­ized court dock­ets, Adult Court Ser­vices Chief Pro­ba­tion Offi­cer Doug Miss­man said that the county plans to con­tinue to pro­vide spe­cial­ized ser­vices to those offend­ers in the men­tal health and drug dockets.

“In the last year or so it has got­ten really inter­est­ing,” he said. “I’m hop­ing we could find some cre­ative ways to con­tinue with these pro­grams if fund­ing is cut because they do help.”

Adding to the pres­sure on the court is recently passed new sen­tenc­ing guide­lines that are designed to deal with Ohio’s over­crowded prison pop­u­la­tion. The bill requires judges to divert cer­tain offend­ers into com­mu­nity pro­grams rather than prison, increas­ing the work­load for county and munic­i­pal governments.

Miss­man char­ac­ter­ized the new sen­tenc­ing guide­lines as yet another exam­ple of an unfunded man­date from the state level.

“Some of the things they are ask­ing are pretty tough,” he said.

The new sen­tenc­ing guide­lines and fund­ing cuts have forced the court to pri­or­i­tize and focus more on those in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem that are likely to offend again.

“It’s a tough bal­anc­ing act,” Miss­man said.

The fund­ing cuts to the Juve­nile Divi­sion of the court have been even steeper, accord­ing to Rick Smith, fis­cal coor­di­na­tor for the Delaware County Juve­nile Pro­bate Court.

In the past year, he has seen grant fund­ing that pays for the the juve­nile drug court, pro­ba­tion offi­cers and intake offi­cers reduced by more than $150,000.

Smith said that the court is cur­rently in the process of seek­ing addi­tional grant fund­ing. Fail­ing that, though, the court may be forced to seek addi­tional money from the county or oth­er­wise reduce services.

“If we do not get any addi­tional grants from other sources, then we will have to seek addi­tional fund­ing from the county com­mis­sion­ers,” he said.

With reduced fund­ing and increased case­loads, the court is look­ing to save wher­ever it can, includ­ing fill­ing open full-time posi­tions with part-time staff.

“We just kind of con­tinue to try to cut cor­ners where we can,” Smith said.

The Delaware County Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (EMA) is also fac­ing cuts in the form of a fed­eral Home­land Secu­rity Grant.

In year’s past, the state has received about $20 mil­lion from the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, which is divided among Ohio’s coun­ties and cities. Next year, the fund­ing level is expected to drop to about $3.8 mil­lion for the state, accord­ing to Brian Gal­ligher, head of the county’s EMA.

“There’s just not going to be a lot of new equip­ment that we will be buy­ing for first respon­ders,” Gal­ligher said.

The cuts are not unex­pected, accord­ing to Gal­ligher, but it will force his agency to focus on main­tain­ing the equip­ment that past grant money has allowed the county to purchase.

“It’s been good,” he said. “It’s just now we’ve bought enough equip­ment and now we just need to main­tain the equip­ment that has been purchased.”

The biggest loss of fund­ing over­all, how­ever, comes at the county level. The county is set to receive $1.3 mil­lion from the state in Local Gov­ern­ment Funds in 2013, a 31.6 per­cent decrease from the amount of fund­ing it receive from the same source in 2012.

Accord­ing to Pol­icy Mat­ters Ohio, a lib­eral think tank, from 2010-11 to 2012–13 state fund­ing to Delaware County has fallen by $7.7 mil­lion, includ­ing Local Gov­ern­ment Funds. The study found that over that time the county has lost $3.5 mil­lion in Tan­gi­ble Per­sonal Prop­erty Tax reim­burse­ment, $546,796 in Pub­lic Util­ity Tax reim­burse­ment and $3.8 mil­lion in Local Gov­ern­ment Funds.

Com­mis­sioner Ken O’Brien said that the county will be able to weather that loss of fund­ing because of an already lean county gov­ern­ment and casino rev­enues that will sup­ple­ment some of the lost funding.

“We are very for­tu­nate that we are receiv­ing some casino funds and that will help mit­i­gate those losses,” he said. “I don’t see Delaware County hav­ing sig­nif­i­cant issues.”

While the loss of funds will not result in any major ser­vice being cut in Delaware County, it could put the brakes on any increase in ser­vices, he said.

“For the most part all of the offices in Delaware County are work­ing effi­ciently and effec­tively,” he said. “I think what it does is it stops us from increas­ing services.”

Posted by Gary Henery on Aug 15 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.