There is a simple rule of economics that should be posted for every elected and appointed official in McHenry County: When you spend more than you earn, eventually you’re going to get into trouble.
The county is heading for serious trouble, and it is up to the County Board to make sure that it doesn’t happen. That means board members must have the fortitude to stand by their recent vote instructing department heads to cut almost 16 percent in spending from the forthcoming 1998 county budget.
The cuts will be painful, because they almost surely will involve some of the county’s 1,100 employees. And county residents may suffer as well, with a decrease in county-provided services.
The alternatives, however, are worse, among them having the county slip into debt, be forced to borrow to pay its bills and pay interest on the debt, and, possibly, see its bond rating lowered. And if big cuts aren’t made now, it’s likely they will have to be even bigger in the future.
Some of this is the result of the county’s trying to provide more services to keep pace with its explosive growth, as well as other, unforeseen expenses and a substantial investment in computers to boost efficiency. All this while the state-imposed property tax cap limited the county’s ability to increase revenues.
And yet today’s calamity could have been largely avoided with more prudence in the past. As a recent audit by KPMG Peat Marwick showed, county revenues increased 9.6 percent annually since 1988, while spending went up 9.9 percent annually; total spending, in fact, more than doubled in that time from $20 million to $41 million, with the county almost depleting its cash reserves to make up the difference.
Worse, despite a hiring freeze, 54 jobs were added to the payroll since 1994, at a cost of about $1.2 million. As County Board Chairman Dianne Klemm observed, it seems there’s always a reason or excuse to make an exception to a freeze–an all-too-common practice.
There may be more excuses in the days ahead as department heads face the reality of making their spending cuts and confront the temptation to find every expense essential. But their duty is to do the board’s bidding and make good-faith efforts to meet their budget targets.
The real crunch will come in November when the board must finalize the next budget. And based on the one-vote margin by which it ordered the preliminary cuts, the outcome is no sure thing. But there really is no choice: The hard choices must be made now.
