Scheduling Meetings With Department Chiefs

I'm working to schedule meetings with the Directors of various Departments within our county in the interest of discussing budgetary issues and the scope of their offices.

There is a great need to cut budgets, and certainly that is my direction, but it is important to know which items are in these budgets because of mandates or the Indiana Constitution even.

Some things can be put on the table today, and other things would need a much lengthier process, such as a Constitutional Amendment. Either of these things can be worthy of putting on the table, but it will pay to know which items could be cut or scaled back immediately.

We think about our sprawling Federal government, but one look at the list of departments in the county shows that we have a lot of government, some more genuinely necessary- such as courts- than others.

Indy Star Reports on Kole Campaign

Indianapolis Star reporter Carrie Ritchie interviewed me recently about the campaign and about Hamilton County politics. Here's a link to the report.

Though Republicans have a strong grip on county offices, Kole thinks he can take some votes from Levine on Nov. 2.

"I think I'm a little more aggressively fiscally conservative and I can step to the right on economic issues," Kole said.

Kole worries the county spends too much money and believes it could make deeper cuts, especially now that it's struggling to balance its budget.

The budget and number of county employees has always been too high. Now that the county cannot afford to keep a bloated payroll, it should be obvious to anyone that the time to cut deeply is now.

Budget Struggles

It has been interesting to see the County Council and County Commissioners struggle to get the budget beast under control. In my opinion, they are doing many of the things that need to be done, looking for costs to cut, and beginning to require that spending be justified. Link: Minutes of May 18 joint meeting of Hamilton County Council & County Commissioners.

That's all well and good, but Libertarian candidates for County offices had been saying that these bodies should be doing this when they ran in 2002. How much better off in terms of fiscal health would our County be if some of them were elected then, and the belt tightening had begun when tax receipts were up? A great deal better.

While I see provisions to reduce overtime, and even consideration to reduce the work week, I did not see any evidence that staff sizes have been reduced. Especially as the County has seen a curtailment in growth, it cannot be possible that as many regulators and inspectors are needed now as when growth was astronomical. More staff cutting can, and should, be done.