The Budget Saga Continues – Uncertainty, Education and Hard Work

As I reported earlier this year, the County Council was presented a balanced budget prepared by the county executive on November 1.  Last month, we had three budget hearings and several additional council meetings.  November was the busiest month for the council thus far. 

I continue to learn at a pace not experienced since I attended law school.   I am honored and pleased to see all the hard work members of the council are putting into understanding the complexity of the budget and to focusing on making our tax dollars stretch as far as possible.  Outside of council meetings, I am certain that each council member has invested at least a dozen hours working through spreadsheets, letters and reports to gain an understanding of the process and the budget itself.  The result has been a thoughtful, well-reasoned proposal document. 

The surprising impact of all this work has been to watch the overreaction of some county employees to rumors, news and assumed implications of questions council members have posed while they struggle to understand certain budget items.  Questions, to some, have become vicious rumors.  To quote President Roosevelt: “The only thing to fear is fear itself.”  I expressed my surprise at news of fear and uncertainty allegedly rippling through county buildings after our budget meetings from a friend and county employee.  Their response to my surprise was equally surprising – “No one has ever asked questions like this before.”   To add to the fear of the unknown, county employees have been instructed by the director of administration not to contact council members directly.  This has created an unfortunate, but completely reasonable under the circumstances, fear of the unknown. 

All employees and all citizens have the right and freedom to attend any of our council meetings. Council members represent ALL individuals who live in Jefferson County.  We each have a sincere desire to represent our constituency to the best of our ability.  We are all still new to the budget process, but there is still much we don’t know.  Sigmund Freud once said, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”.  My hope is that, similarly, people would apply a similar analysis to our questions – sometimes a question is just a question.  These questions are not attempts to embarrass, to uncover wrongdoing, to send a message of displeasure or imminent doom.  These questions are simply questions, meant to help us gain information so that we can do our job more effectively.

Tomorrow at 6:30 p.m. on the second floor of the Justice Center in Hillsboro, the Council will hold its final budget meeting to finalize recommended amendments to the budget.  The budget hearing will be at 6:30 p.m. Dec. 12 in the council chamber in the Administration Building in Hillsboro.  These meetings are free and open to the public.  Council members welcome attendance and comments from everyone who is willing to provide them.  This is the open, transparent government system that the charter intended to create.

We are on target to pass the budget by the end of the year.