County should revisit sales-tax hike

The Lorain County commissioners were on to something Friday when they suggested that a sales-tax increase might appear on the November ballot. In fact, that's the best solution we've heard yet to resolve the growing number of fights over cuts to the county's budget, which sits at around $89.9 million this year. The commissioners have said they needed to cut about $11 million from what the various county departments and offices requested to get to a balanced budget. About $4 million of that came from voluntary reductions or officials holding their budget requests at 2025 numbers. The remaining $7 million, though, was effectively left to the commissioners, and their decisions rankled other county officials. County Auditor Craig Snodgrass has closed his office on Fridays, and county Sheriff Jack Hall said his office nearly saw 41 of its vehicles, mostly cruisers, repossessed last month because of a budget shortfall. Had voters approved a 0.25 percent sales-tax increase last year, such cuts would have been unnecessary, but, alas, 70.2 percent of voters said no to the increase. The roughly $14 million from that tax increase was supposed to be devoted to Hall's office, but it would have freed up money elsewhere in county government. And while the commissioners did allude to the possibility of budget cuts if the sales-tax increase failed, they didn't make it sound like a five-alarm fire. Well, there's smoke showing now. Commissioner Dave Moore told us Monday that absent additional funding, 2027's budget will create problems even worse than those happening this year. Which is why now is the time for the commissioners to start work on getting a sales-tax increase on the November ballot. It's also why voters need to pay close attention to the funding fights playing out across county government. That's especially the case when it comes to a brewing legal battle between the commissioners and the county's Domestic Relations judges. The commissioners gave the Domestic Relations Court about $13.2 million, which is about $983,000 less than what the judges ordered. The cut is a little more than the roughly $977,000 it costs to run the Turning Point youth-crisis shelter, which closed Saturday due to a lack of funding. Although the commissioners have acknowledged Turning Point is a good program, they said it was defunded because it's not mandated. Which leaves the commissioners in violation of a court order, signed by the county's three Domestic Relations judges, that required the commissioners to fund the court's operations at the same level as in 2025, just over $14.2 million. Domestic Relations Judge Lisa Swenski told us Monday that the judges had found ways to get the cost of funding Turning Point down to about $650,000 this year, but the commissioners refused to fund even that much. (The commissioners have said they have been working to get additional revenue for Turning Point, including through the county's Department of Job and Family Services. A long-term funding alternative has yet to be found.) Domestic Relations Court Administrator Emily Kirsch told us in the same interview that the judges had yet to meet with the lawyers the commissioners voted Friday to hire for them in the funding dispute. Once that happens, the judges will decide how to proceed, but the matter seems likely to end up in court. As she did Friday in talking to the commissioners, Swenski argued that the cost of the legal battle could run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's money she said would be better spent funding Turning Point. (Moore told us the legal fight wouldn't be that expensive.) Unlike other county officials, judges can order their budgets under Ohio law. (Unsurprisingly, commissioners across the state tend not to be fans of such orders.) Still, Lorain County's judges have ordered their budgets off and on for more than a decade, even if no one paid much attention to it for most of that time because the court orders tended to line up with what the commissioners already were giving the courts. Indeed, that's why county Probate Judge James Walther told us Monday that he had stopped ordering his budget in 2023. "There weren't any cuts until this year," he said. For 2026, the commissioners approved a Probate Court budget of just over $1.3 million, which was about $177,000 less than what Walther requested. Walther said he would discuss the budget shortfall with the commissioners at some point this year. (Walther said he was the first county judge to order his budget in 2010 in the aftermath of the Great Recession. The other judges, including the General Division judges, who also ordered their budget this year, eventually followed suit.) Moore predicted the commissioners would win their legal battle with the Domestic Relations judges if it ends up in court, but if the judges come out on top, he warned that cuts would be necessary elsewhere to restore funding for Turning Point. Either way, the fight over Turning Point's future shows the public what happens when there isn't enough money to fund important government services. It also helps make the case for why the commissioners and voters need to revisit raising the sales tax.