Banning, Beaumont Supervisor Recommends Wage Freezes, Furloughs to Contain County Costs

By PAUL J. YOUNG, City News Service:

Dissatisfied with proposals to dig into the county’s reserves to cover bigger bills for public safety and healthcare, a Riverside County supervisor this week recommended a variety of cost-saving measures, including a hiring and wage freeze, furloughs and closing county buildings on Fridays.

“The county has managed to build up its reserves, but our situation now is not good,” Supervisor Marion Ashley said during a hearing on the county’s midyear financial report for fiscal year 2015-16.

SEE ALSO:

RivCo Supervisors Sign off on Proposed Budget, Rate Hikes

“Unless a different direction is taken, we’re not going to be able to maintain our prudent reserve,” he said. “I will not condone the draw-down of our reserves.”

Ashley said he did not believe a balanced budget could be achieved by taking as much as $100 million out of the county’s $200 million reserve pool, as the Executive Office suggested might be necessary.

The former certified public accountant, who is in his final term on the Board of Supervisors, proposed that county staff examine the viability of implementing more than a dozen austerity measures to keep a lid on costs and eventually eliminate the county’s structural budget deficit.

Among the supervisor’s recommendations:

• freeze all departmental hiring, with a few exceptions, until July 1, 2018
• deny all proposed salary increases for union and non-union personnel during that period
• redouble efforts to reduce overtime costs, particularly among sheriff’s deputies
• re-institute employee furloughs
• consolidate departments
• close non-essential county facilities on Fridays

Most of these same actions were implemented during the Great Recession, when the county’s reserve accounts plummeted from nearly $400 million to less than $150 million.

“I don’t believe we’ll have to do all these. But if that’s what it takes, we’ll have to do it,” Ashley said.

Other board members were generally supportive of the concept.

“We don’t live in the red, and I’ve never adopted a budget with deficit spending while I was a city councilman,” Supervisor Chuck Washington said. “There should be no structural deficits.”

Supervisor Kevin Jeffries applauded Ashley’s recommendations as “long overdue” and added a few of his own.

“We need to look at special funding agreements that may have escaped notice in the past,” Jeffries said. “There are general fund dollars that may be going to special events and to organizations that we completely forgot about.”

Board Chairman John Benoit said he detected a “worldwide changing dynamic,” signified by China’s low-gear economy and plummeting energy prices, that portends another global downturn potentially on the horizon.

“We need to be very, very cautious,” he said, voicing opposition to eating up the county’s cash safety net. “I’m glad we started this conversation now.”

County Chief Executive Officer Jay Orr warned in the midyear report that “discretionary revenues and reserves” would be overwhelmed by future expenses without belt-tightening, including holding most agencies at their current spending levels.

Officials last year touted swelling reserves as a sign of the county’s strengthening financial position in the post-recession era, but that feeling has since been supplanted by apprehensions over rising costs, with inmate healthcare services being among the biggest.

In October, the county reached a legal settlement with two law firms that filed a class-action suit on behalf of inmates based on alleged civil rights violations connected with substandard disability and mental health care in local detention facilities. The suits were part of a series of legal actions initiated against local governments throughout California.

County accountants estimate the settlement will saddle public safety agencies with an additional $40 million annual burden. The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department is already more than $30 million in the red, leaving no cushion to contend with skyrocketing detention health expenses.

Executive Office staff noted that cutting even deeper into non-public safety agencies’ budgets -- which represent only 27 percent of total discretionary spending -- to cover the sheriff’s shortfall would still not be enough.

“Deep cuts could compromise core functions, such as revenue collection and services that support improving the quality of life in this county,” staff wrote. “Even Draconian cuts to general government could not yield sufficient savings.”

In addition to the sheriff’s department, the District Attorney’s Office, fire department, Office of the Public Defender and the Office of the Assessor- Clerk-Recorder are grappling with budget gaps. Public safety departments consume two-thirds of county discretionary income.

To reduce expenditures, the board Tuesday re-committed to a phased opening of the East County Detention Center in Indio, which is slated for completion in two years.

Supervisors were also content to leave the freeze on new hiring in the sheriff’s department in place, despite previous flirtations with raising the deputy-to-residents patrol ratio in unincorporated communities to 1.2-per-1,000 given the county’s climbing crime rate.

The board will re-examine budget priorities on March 29, when two audits of public safety agencies’ operating practices are due.

(Image via Shutterstock)