Malheur County budget has no frills
By Larry Meyer — Argus Observer
Thursday, September 6, 2007 10:03 AM PDT
VALE — Malheur County elected leaders continue to work with flat revenues while at the same time grappling with rising costs, and the budget adopted by the County Court for the next fiscal year is approximately $500,000 less than the 2006 to 2007 financial matrix.
“There is nothing new,” Malheur County Judge Dan Joyce said about the county’s budget. The adopted budget for the next fiscal period stood at $12.153 million, down from the $12.667 million approved during the last county budget cycle.
A key issue for county leadership during the past has been the Payments in Lieu of Taxes, or PILT, program. The federal PILT program — which distributes cash based on the amount of federal land within a county’s borders — has proved to be a critical component to the county’s monetary future and supporters of the program have lobbied consistently for it to be fully funded. Finding success regarding full funding of the PILT program, though, has proved to be a challenge.
For example, this year the PILT payment to Malheur County was $6,300 less than the year before, at approximately $1.4 million.
Joyce said when he became a county commissioner, his predecessor, John Bishop, said he needed to keep on top of the PILT payments.
“When I took over it was $700,000,” Joyce said, adding the Bishop had lobbied to get the payment to that level. Joyce and others have been lobbying for full-funding of PILT, which could give Malheur County more than $2 million. The caveat is that if the other counties do not get their timber money renewed, it is expected they will go after PILT funds and Malheur County would get less.
“I think the county has always been budgeting conservatively,” Joyce said. “We’ve budgeted a lot better than other counties.”
The conservative budgeting has helped the county weather bad economic situations better than other counties, Joyce said.
“We’ve maintained well,” Joyce said.
The new county budget, though, did not leave room for two more patrol deputies at the Malheur County Sheriff’s Office, but Sheriff Andy Bentz offered a philosophical view of the situation.
“This is the fifth year of maintaining what we have,” Bentz said. “We are very pleased we didn’t go backwards.”
Bentz said the county’s best hope is growth with more people and business in the county.
“We’ve got to have growth, development,” he said, adding more development would naturally spark tax growth.
Although it does not get general fund money, another part of the county budget is the county road department, which maintains county roads outside the four roads districts, serving the rural areas around Ontario, Nyssa, Juntura and Ironside.
Ken Freese, county roadmaster, said while there are road districts in other counties, Malheur County is the only one with districts formed to maintain county roads, each able to levy a property tax. However, the county road department is not a taxing entity and gets most of its money through state sources.
This year’s budget is a little better than last year’s, Freese said.
“We got some mining lease money,’’ Freese said.
However, Freese conceded there is potential bad news.
“We don’t know if it will be repeated. It’s not something you can count on,” he said. The state gas tax money is relatively stable, but then there is the increase in the cost of fuel and other related materials such as asphalt.
“There is very little we can do in the road business without burning fuel,” Freese said.
Alma wrote on Aug 28, 2009 8:22 PM:
Im so very proud of you, you did AMAZING!! Yet still very young and have years to improve, which seems scary. I know grandpa was cheering for you, chanting #1, #1... Keep up the great work kido. "