{"id":14120,"date":"2020-10-29T15:06:36","date_gmt":"2020-10-29T19:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=14120"},"modified":"2020-10-29T15:06:41","modified_gmt":"2020-10-29T19:06:41","slug":"the-county-is-not-taking-its-budget-crisis-seriously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=14120","title":{"rendered":"The County is Not Taking its Budget Crisis Seriously"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I have previously written, MoCo government is in the throes of a dire budget crisis<\/a> that rivals the near-death experience it suffered during the Great Recession. The county is looking at an estimated revenue shortfall of $522 million from FY20 through FY22. In response, the county executive announced back in March<\/a> that he had \u201calready instituted a hiring and procurement freeze for all programs not engaged in direct response to COVID-19.\u201d The idea was to clamp down on all but the most necessary types of spending to weather the county\u2019s pandemic-fueled budget downturn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing has improved since then. However, it\u2019s apparent that the hiring freeze is over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, I received this notice from the county\u2019s Office of Community Partnerships that they are hiring for three community outreach positions and a program manager position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s not all. The county\u2019s online hiring system<\/a> shows 43 open positions for which the county is soliciting applications, of which 22 were posted this month and 9 were posted in the last week. These positions include an adoption counselor in the Office of Animal Services, an administrative specialist in the environmental protection director\u2019s office, a manager in the retirement plan office, a policy analyst in the budget office, a warehouse position at the liquor monopoly and three positions at the county council. It\u2019s hard to argue that any of these positions are \u201cengaged in direct response to COVID-19.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So let\u2019s add this all up. The county is facing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue losses. Nevertheless, it has committed to open-ended COVID pay that could total $100 million over the course of the year<\/a>, is spending freely from reserves and passed a cream puff savings plan<\/a> full of paper \u201csavings\u201d from lapsed positions. The county can\u2019t stick to its previously announced hiring freeze and is even hinting at another raid on retiree health care money<\/a>. The county\u2019s fiscal strategy, such as it is, is to pray for a federal bailout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe the county will get a bailout after all. If the feds don\u2019t do it, will taxpayers be asked to do it next spring?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. As I have previously written, MoCo government is in the throes of a dire budget crisis that rivals the near-death experience it suffered during the Great Recession. The county is looking at an estimated revenue shortfall of $522 million from FY20 through FY22. In response, the county executive announced back in March … Continue reading The County is Not Taking its Budget Crisis Seriously<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,33],"tags":[1545,1368],"class_list":["post-14120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-budget","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-budget"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-3FK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14120"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14124,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14120\/revisions\/14124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}