Understand what is going on with Mecklenburg County’s fiscal situation.
First County Manager Harry Jones fires all the ghost employees he’d been stockpiling to “save” $38m. toward a $80m. budget hole. Next the county looks at hiking every service fee possible to bring in perhaps $10m. more. Figure a few million more in savings via county-wide belt tightening. So far so good. This is exactly what we said would happen.
Then along comes CMS and Pete Gorman to say that CMS absolutely, positively cannot absorb any base-line cuts at all and must receive the same $351m. it got last year. Brickwall. What happened?
CMS got a look at what lawmakers in Raleigh planned to do with education spending, that’s what happened. No big boost, even a slight reduction in the of rate growth is probable once all is said and done. That leaves the county as the last, best hope for dollars — even if it means mandating a property tax hike as a result.
Hence Gorman has gone back to the teacher layoff spiel he went away from for a couple weeks after it became clear that CMS was not remotely growing at projected rates.
The county commission is in a box, however. County elections are next year, making this year the preferred time for a tax hike. Yet they are on record as being worried about the impacts of higher property tax bills during a recession — heck, we put off a reval last fall because of that concern.
This should be very interesting.
Update: Commissioner Bill James weighs in to point out that Gorman is explicitly saying that he can turn out enough pressure to force the county to meet his demands. Like I said, interesting.
