Commissioners promise budget cuts in wake of Issue 1 defeat at polls

Two county commissioners said Friday that they will consider how to cut the county's budget after voters defeated a sale tax increase at the polls on Tuesday. At their Friday morning morning, Republican commissioners Jeff Riddell and David Moore gave their post-election thoughts on Issue 1, the failed 0.25 percent sales tax increase meant to bolster the Lorain County Sheriff's Office budget. Commissioner Marty Gallagher was ill and not present at Friday's meeting. The estimated $13.7 million the sales tax increase would have raised was intended specifically for the Sheriff's Office. Commissioners put the issue on the ballot in July. It failed Tuesday 41,747 votes against to 17,709 votes for, or 70 percent to 30 percent according to complete but unofficial results from the Lorain County Board of Elections. Final results will be certified Nov. 18. "It's a little disappointing," Riddell said Friday. "Maybe we lacked the education to get it done. Maybe we just didn't have enough supports by those that were engaged." Riddell called it concerning that a number of people tied the proposed sales tax to ongoing economic and infrastructure development in the county, including the 1,000-plus acre so-called "mega site" around the Lorain County Regional Airport in New Russia Township and a proposed regional sewer project in the county. Both are "totally unrelated to the annual budget," Riddell said. What will happen, he said, is that the county general fund that pays for day-to-day operations and government services "will be impacted by the quarter-percent (tax) that did not pass." The county is looking at a possible $5 million budget deficit in 2026 with budget talks looming before the end of the year. Riddell and Moore promised they would be having budget discussions with elected officials in the coming weeks. "We will commence conversations with electeds and department heads over the next four, five, six weeks, and we will have to go back to a budget that is now smaller than the budget was in 2016 simply because we did not replace a tax that was eliminated at the time," Riddell said. Moore said he took the sales tax defeat "in a different light" than others: "I took it as a mandate that county government has to shrink," he said Friday. Moore said 70 percent "gave us a mandate to say 'Live within your means.' Seventy percent of the people said to the 16 elected county officials, that 'You're too fat.'" Voter turnout Tuesday was 28 percent of registered voters in Lorain County. That 41,747 voters voted "no" on Issue 1 means only 13 percent of Lorain County's 320,000-plus residents decided the issue for the rest of the county. (No matter the math, "we have a mandate to cut," Moore told a reporter late Friday in a text message.) The "no" vote on the sales tax was to a mandate to cut government and grow the economy, said Moore, who said 75 percent of the county's $86.7 million budget is in employee salaries — a number that couldn't immediately be verified Friday. "So with me saying that, I'll let everyone else, the other 16 elected officials figure out what that means," he said. "It means things are not going to be pretty the next 45 days. It means we're going to get beat up. But it also means I'm going to fall back on the public, who said, 70 percent of the people said 'No, live within your means.' Because they are. And they're being taxed to death." Riddell invited the public to contact the commissioners' office "if they have questions about what's going to come next" or his statements on Friday. Contact Dave O'Brien at (440) 329-7129 or dobrien@chroniclet.com.