County frustrated by unfunded mandates

By Lee Bonorden (Contact) | Austin Daily Herald

Published Thursday, June 5, 2008

The Mower County Board of Commissioners are mad as heck and won’t take it anymore.

“The Minnesota Legislature has enjoyed using the county as their checkbook for far too long,” said David Hillier, 3rd District.

Hillier was talking about the latest round of criticism for unfunded mandates: the state demands certain programs and services be provided, but does not pay for those programs and services — the county does.

“Basically it means , they can amend their budgets, but the services are still provided by county government,” Hillier said.

“Of course, our money comes from tax levies,” he went on to say.

Hillier said the situation was discussed at length at a recent district Association of Minnesota Counties meeting.

When the 2008 legislative session ended, Gov. Tim Pawlenty identified levy limits as the linchpin of 11th hour negotiations.

AMC was asked to identify the specific concerns it had with the governor’s levy limit proposal; they responded with six concerns.

One of the outgrowths of the AMC survey was the suspension of the provisions for maintenance of efforts (MOEs) and matching funds proposals.

What this would mean is that counties would be allowed more flexibility in directing resources to various programs.

By suspending the MOEs, the state underlined mandates will continue and counties will have to provide those services and pay for them.

“Some of the things that have happened recently have really thrown us to a different title, than a partner,” said Hillier.

The commissioner pointed to a 2003 “Futures in Government” project to underscore the growing role of counties in providing the mandated services.

“County government and our local finances are not sustainable given what the Legislature continues to do,” he said.

The results, according to Hillier, “The finance committee will probably have a more difficult time with the budget this summer than it has in the past and part of that is because of the various legislative things that have happened.”

Each year, the county struggles with finances and tries to do more with less.

Lurking in the horizon is the Mower County Jail/Justice project.

Expected to be a $32 million bond referendum or, hopefully, less, the county commissioners are looking for any areas where they can save money, reduce spending and fight off the unfunded mandates in order to make the jail/justice center bon referendum pain as little as possible under the circumstances.

While tax valuations have gone up each year in recent history in Mower County, so, too, have property tax levies. Not by choice, but by necessity.

The quandary the county finds itself bogged down with is that even if it wanted to raise levies to pay for unfunded mandates and/or its jail/justice center bond referendum, the governor refuses to allow that and places limits on lives.

The commissioners will direct their finance committee to begin budget talks with department heads early this summer.

In the meantime, they are scrambling to force change — they would call it “relief” — where the quandary originated: the state capitol in St. Paul.

Although they have done this before, the only hope they have to reduce the havoc created by the Minnesota Legislature’s continuing reliance on unfunded mandates is to plead for help from local legislators.

That’s how Tuesday’s discussion ended: The commissioners want a face-to-fact meeting with the legislators to let them know they are mad as heck about unfunded mandates and won’t take it anymore.

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