Breaking Down the Budget: A quick look at Clark County's 2-year plan

Network administrator Rick Schnelle monitors computers throughout Clark County’s offices. The county’s computer services team will be among many hit by budget cuts next year. A quick look at Clark County’s 2-year plan (ZACHARY KAUFMAN/The Columbian)

On Thursday, county commissioners passed a two-year budget that eliminates about 8 percent of the county’s work force and includes its biggest service cuts since the early 1980s.

Budgets: Everybody knows they’re important, but nobody enjoys reading or (psst) writing about them.

The Columbian is here to help. If you only read one story about Clark County’s budget this year, make it this one: we’ll give you all the basics below, in three or fewer minutes.

The budget affects …?

Everybody in the county, inside cities and out. County workers immunize your baby, assess your property, treat your schizophrenia and, if necessary, throw you in jail. For people who live outside city limits — anybody from Hazel Dell to Orchards to Amboy — the county also acts like a city government, paying for cops, roads, building code enforcers and so forth.

How big is the budget?

$994,447,004 over two years, 2009 and 2010. That’s down 6 percent from $1.05 billion in 2007-2008.

So, 6 percent less to spend — what’s the big deal?

Most workers get raises of about 6 percent over two years, and the county’s generous health benefits often rise in cost by more than 10 percent. So even the same amount of money wouldn’t be enough to keep things as they are.

What will change the most?

Probably public health, code enforcement, drug and mental health treatment and (don’t scoff) the county’s internal computer team.

The public health department will change radically, laying off a third of its staff by the end of 2009 and instead trying to recruit nonprofits to do the same work for less pay. The county will lose three of its seven code enforcement officers. Nobody knows yet where the cuts will come in drug and mental health treatment, because they depend on state decisions next year. And with five positions cut from the computer team, all the county’s computers will crash more and employees won’t be trained as well in using computers.

Will any county services improve?

The county sheriff’s road patrols will add four new deputy positions in 2010. The sheriff says that’s not enough to keep up with the population, so it’s an open question.

Why are the cuts happening?

The short answer is: because the county thinks home building will almost halt until the end of 2010. That’s how long it’d take to sell all the new houses that now sit empty.

No new houses mean no new taxpayers, but that’s not all: back in 2006, so many construction materials were being bought that they accounted for 38 percent of the county’s taxable sales. So the building downturn has hurt both sales and property taxes.

But there’s a long answer, too: voter initiatives. In 1999, a state ballot initiative cut the cost of car tabs. Two years later, another vote capped property tax hikes to 1 percent per year, except for new developments.

Those laws didn’t have dramatic effects until now, because counties funded their ever-rising labor costs with new development and Homeland Security grants. But now, both of those things are scarce. Cities and counties now rely much more on sales taxes, which go down in a recession.

Is all this happening in other counties?

Yep.

What happens next?

The first service cuts and layoffs begin in January. By spring, the county will know whether falling sales during the holiday season might force further cuts.

While he voted for the new budget Thursday morning, Commissioner Marc Boldt, a free-market Republican who has worked as a farmer and truck driver, choked up and struggled to speak as he discussed riding in the elevator with laid-off employees.

He urged county employees who still have jobs to shop for gifts in Clark County.

“That sales tax is our only hope for not laying people off in March and April,” Boldt said.

Michael Andersen: 360-735-4508 or michael.andersen@columbian.com.