County Council President George Leventhal criticized spending cuts that County Executive Ike Leggett recently proposed to help balance the county’s 2016 budget, saying long-term cost savings could be better realized by possibly reducing burgeoning salaries for top-level county management jobs.
Last week, Leggett proposed $51 million in cuts to the budget approved by the council in mid-May. The cuts are necessary, according to Leggett, due to less-than-projected income tax revenue and repercussions from the recent Supreme Court decision that found the state’s income tax law to be unconstitutional. The decision is expected to result in a drop in county revenue of an estimated $150 million or more in fiscal year 2017.
Leventhal said at a press conference Monday the county’s approved reserves stand at $383 million, the highest figure ever, and $12 million more than the target the council set in 2011.
“We are a well-resourced county and the bottom has not fallen out,” Leventhal said. “We’re going to be all right, but we do need to make reductions to the base to enable the decisions that we make next spring to be handled in a responsible and constructive way.”
Patrick Lacefield, Leggett's spokesman, said the Wynne case will cost the county $15 million this year and income tax revenues fell by at least $43 million this year. He said as a result the county executive believes the council must find at least $50 million in budget savings.
Leventhal said he’s concerned about Leggett’s proposals to cut a $500,000 voucher program designed to assist homeless veterans and about $1 million in supplemental funds directed to organizations that assist the developmentally disabled.
“This is the year that Montgomery County has designated as the year of the veteran,” Leventhal said. “We’ve subscribed to a national effort called Zero: 2016, whose goal is the elimination of homelessness among veterans by 2015 and elimination of chronic homelessness by 2016. Under those circumstances, I truly don’t feel eliminating housing vouchers for homeless veterans is consistent with our community values.”
Leventhal said it was a short-term reduction that could result in greater long-term costs for the county in terms of health care and other costs associated with caring for the local population of homeless veterans.
The disability fund cuts would affect payments typically given as a supplement to state funds provided to organizations that aid the local disabled population. The funds are used by the organizations to help developmentally disabled individuals offset the high cost of living in the county.
Leggett also proposed cutting $147,688 that was budgeted to help increase the wages of workers who help the developmentally disabled. Leventhal said these health attendants help the county’s most vulnerable population.
“I don’t understand how you can look at the difficulties of the job that these attendants have assisting clients on the autism spectrum, clients who are profoundly disabled,” Leventhal said. “Some of these clients bite and hit their attendant and we are asking folks to work for just pennies above what any of us would consider a livable wage. To reduce our support for those workers, I think, is not the kind of decision our community wants us to make.”
Leventhal also criticized Leggett for significantly reducing the council’s $18.2 million reconciliation list, which consists of specific items council members approved after Leggett submitted his original budget proposal. Leggett cut more than half of the list, about $10.4 million.
The reconciliation list represented about 0.3 percent of the county’s $5.1 billion 2016 budget.
He said the council plans to examine the budget process in the future to make sure executive departments are making spending and personnel decisions in line with the approved budget. Leventhal said part of that examination will also include evaluating the salaries of high-level managers.
“By the time we get to the [fiscal year 2017] budget I hope we’ll have in place a new approach towards top-level compensation,” Leventhal said.
He added he has asked the county’s Office of Legislative Oversight to research whether the county pays its top-level managers salaries similar to those in other comparable jurisdictions across the country.
“We have to have a conversation over the long-term about right-sizing. I think we are compensating people very, very generously and I’m talking about hundreds of senior-level managers,” Leventhal said.
He said the review wouldn’t examine existing salaries, but would look into making sure salaries for new senior-level employees are in line with current compensation standards. He said the council may even look into whether it can review salaries for new hires.
Leventhal said many top-level employees are paid more than $200,000 annually and that the county may find through the study that it’s an “outlier” in this respect. If so, he said, the council should be more “circumspect” about offering salaries that are out of line with other comparable jurisdictions.
Over the next two weeks council committees are scheduled to review the cuts proposed by Leggett. Leventhal said the council is likely to vote on the cuts at its last meeting before its summer recess on July 28.
