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Time to adopt a 21st-century budget solution

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Tom Jackson

tjackson@tampatrib.com

Published: June 3, 2009

Let's settle two things right at the top, the better to accommodate the subtleties destined to emerge as keys to settling the county's latest budget nightmare.

No. 1: Commissioner Jack Mariano's idea for closing a $30 million funding gap - whack all constitutional offices 15 percent - reflects expediency, not engagement. It dismisses the art and agony of governing while presuming much that cannot be demonstrated.

For instance, the assumptions that each office performs an equally valuable function; that each has been ideally funded in the past; and that each is equally capable of absorbing a budgetary hit without putting the public at risk.

No. 2: Sheriff Bob White's opening ante shaves $3 million from his current outlays. It is an admirable first effort, but he will almost certainly have to slice deeper.

How much deeper becomes the question. Given Pasco's track record under County Administrator John Gallagher, expect a counterproposal that exposes bone.

Where's the money?

The folks operating out of the West Pasco Government Center will go after the sheriff's budget in much the same spirit that Willie Sutton went after banks: Because that's where the money is.

Law enforcement is personnel-intensive, thus cost-intensive. You can computerize tax collections, put property assessments online, make an entire array of courthouse data collections and dispersals available to anyone with a keyboard and a mouse, and perform virtually every task in the elections realm electronically.

But when a contractor discovers blank space where bundles of copper tubing were the night before, when antagonistic neighbors finally come to blows, when a 5-year-old in overalls and a striped T-shirt goes missing, or when a little bungalow betrays a wildly suspicious heat signature, we expect well-armed humans in uniform to come, immediately, to make things better.

If for no other reason, commissioners must tread lightly on the sheriff's plan. But there's more, beginning with the fact that there are more of us within the sheriff's jurisdiction than ever. Also, tough economies prompt more of us to succumb to bad behavior.

Priorities versus percentages

Moreover, taxpayers get it. In a recent survey, law enforcement topped the list of vital services, followed closely by fire protection and emergency medical care.

Commissioners interested in doing their constituents' will - and depriving potential challengers of campaign issues - will act accordingly.

First up: Repudiate the Gallagher Rule, in which the budget is carved up by percentages fixed, give or take a fraction, in the previous century.

Pasco's law enforcement needs have been pegged to a 51 percent solution (of ad valorem receipts) for a generation.

It's time county commissioners acknowledged 21st century realities.

Keyword: The Jax Files, for Tom Jackson's bonus insights.

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