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County Assessor's Office Lays Off Six Employees
By Evin Fritschle, Missourian Staff Writer
11/03/2009
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The Franklin County Assessor's office has laid off three full-time and three part-time employees to compensate for sizable budget cuts from the state.

Gov. Jay Nixon last Wednesday, Oct. 28, slashed the formula for funding reassessments to county assessors statewide last week as part of a $204 million reduction in state spending.

For county assessors' offices, the formula for funding was reduced from $5.99 to $4 per parcel of land.

Franklin County receives funding for 69,000 parcels, Assessor Tom Copeland said Tuesday.

The county contains more parcels but does not receive state funding for them all.

The cut, which was made retroactive back to July, represents about a 33 reduction the funding.

Based on the $1.99 cut per parcel and the 69,000 parcels the county receives funding for, the reductions total $137,310 of the $413,310 the office would have received from the state.

The $413,310 makes up about 30-40 percent of the office's budget.

The figure is closer to 33 percent, according to the 2009 budget prepared at the beginning of the year.

That budget does not account for potential cuts made throughout the year, however.

Making the state cuts retroactive to July, which puts it in line with the state's budget year, doubles the blow to the county, Copeland said.

"I expect more (cuts)," he said. "We're still looking at all the figures."

The county's fiscal year, on the other hand, runs in line with the calendar year.

"If you approximate the figure at say, $140,000, when they make it retroactive to July it becomes more like $275,000," Copeland said.

"The negative part is we still have the same amount of work to do," he said.

After learning of the cuts Thursday, Copeland said he immediately began working to try to save positions.

"We thought we could limp our way through," he said, but that was before he found out the cuts were retroactive.

"That's what nailed us there," Commissioner Ann Schroeder said regarding to retroactive nature of the cuts.

"They cut money we've already spent," Auditor Ralph Sudholt said.

Sudholt and other county officeholders worked with Copeland to crunch the numbers.

"We were caught with the lights off," Copeland said. "We dealt with this Saturday and Sunday. The commission, the auditor, the county counselor, everyone saw the dilemma I faced."

"After sharpening the pencils and looking at the figures, we laid off six employees and made some further reductions in salaries," he said.

The part-time employees are not currently working and they were set to begin their work in the next month, he said.

"When you start laying off people, you're not the hit of the parade," Copeland said.

At the beginning of the year, the assessor's budget was $1,253,623 for both the personal property and real estate departments.

The state reimbursement was budgeted at $400,000.

Other county offices could see cuts in the future if the state needs to make future reductions.

Different offices including the sheriff's department and child services receive state funding.

The cuts at the state level cost 363 people their jobs.

The state had predicted about a 1 percent increase in revenue for the year, a figure which now seems out of reach.

So far this year the state has seen a 10 percent drop in collections.

The state collects revenue on sales tax and income taxes.

The county only collects sales tax.

"We're not sure the state's last shoe has dropped," Presiding Commissioner Ed Hillhouse said. "The governor made cuts in many categories."

Among those cuts were $32.4 million from Medicaid, $20 million from state personnel and $29.3 million from a project for a first responder communication network.

Over $6 million was cut from assessors' offices across the state.

"We hope nothing else like that happens," Hillhouse said. "The state is facing one heck of a shake. It's going to be interesting.

"That's why we started the budget process early, to get everything in order," he said.

The commission has been meeting with various department heads to try to plan budgets for next year before the December deadline.

Sudholt said about 20 meetings have been held in recent weeks with more scheduled for this week.

The county itself has seen shortfalls in its revenue.

Hillhouse estimated about a $1 million decline in county sales tax collections earlier in the year, a figure which seems on track based on monthly reports from the county clerk's office.


©Washington Missouri 2010

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Reader Comments
Added: Monday November 09, 2009 at 02:32 PM EST
what a shame
I think it is a shame that they laid off these people but kept a part time employee who gets paid holidays and health insurance benefits. Would it not have been more cost effective to lay off a person who is costing more out of the budget than the others? Who makes these decisions? It just looks bad from a tax payer's view.
earlsgirl@prodigy.net

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