If Lane County commissioners were looking to Josephine County to lead the way out of the budgetary crisis faced by more than a dozen rural Oregon counties, they were sorely disappointed Tuesday night when that county’s voters overwhelmingly rejected a property tax levy to plug a $12-million gap resulting from the loss of federal timber revenue.
Lane County commissioners may not have publicly acknowledged it, but they and their counterparts in Curry, Coos, Douglas and other counties were intently watching the outcome of the Josephine County election. They were hoping for a sign that voters in their own beleaguered counties might respond to the threat of massive reductions in county services, even insolvency, and step up to cover the loss of federal payments and the cost of essential county services.
Voters in Josephine County sent a sign — but not the one that commissioners in that and other rural timber counties were hoping for. By a vote of 57 percent to 43 percent, voters rejected a four-year levy that would have increased the county’s property tax rate to $1.99 per $1,000. The current tax rate for county services is 59 cents per $1,000, making Josephine’s rate the lowest among Oregon’s 36 counties. (Lane County is seventh, at $1.28.)
On Wednesday, less than 24 hours after the election results were in, the budget ax fell in Josephine County.
As of May 31, 70 of the sheriff’s 98 positions will no longer exist. The county jail capacity will drop from 120 local inmates to 30, with at least 75 inmates set for release. Rural patrols will continue only in the limited form of what the elected sheriff, Gil Gilbertson, and three contract deputies can provide. The district attorney will lose four of his nine prosecutors. Additional cuts will hit the juvenile department, community corrections and other programs.
If those budget cuts sound familiar, it’s because they’re similar to those planned in counties throughout Oregon’s timber country.
Here in Lane County, the cuts are nearly as severe as those approved by Josephine County commissioners. While Lane County’s budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 has not been finalized and commissioners are considering a last-ditch proposal that could mitigate some of the cuts, current plans call for closing 131 county jail beds, leaving only 120 beds for local offenders in a facility built to house 500 prisoners. (The county already has eliminated its forest work camp and the 120 beds it provided, as well as most of the 120 beds at its Community Corrections Center.)
The sheriff’s office plans to cut its patrol force from 24 deputies to just six. That would leave the county with 0.18 patrol deputies for every 1,000 residents outside of city limits and little help from the Oregon State Police, whose troopers already are overextended because of state staffing reductions.
The butcher’s list runs on: The district attorney plans to lay off a fourth of his staff, including eight criminal prosecutors. The medical examiner’s office will cease to exist unless commissioners and the district attorney can figure out away to patch it together with spare change and duct tape. The Kids FIRST program, which provides refuge for victims of child abuse and children who have witnessed violent crimes, is teetering on the brink.
The outcome of Tuesday’s levy vote in Josephine County may discourage Lane County commissioners from putting a limited tax levy on the November ballot to increase funding for public safety. But they should give such a levy serious consideration. It’s possible that voters in Lane County, after seeing the impacts of the budget cuts that are about to hit the county’s windshield, may be willing to pass a modest property tax levy dedicated exclusively for jail beds and other core public safety programs. It’s also possible that a property tax levy could serve as a beachhead for the eventual formation of a public safety taxing district that would remove the chronic uncertainty over Lane County law enforcement.
The realistic prospects for short-term relief from Congress boil down to a possible one-year reauthorization of greatly reduced county payments. That money, a few million dollars for Lane County’s general fund, would help, but it would represent the equivalent of a half-filled canteen in the middle of a large desert. It could also prove misleading to voters who might believe, as many have in the past, that a short-term renewal of county payments resolves the county’s long-term budget problems.
A proposal by Oregon’s House members Peter DeFazio, Greg Walden and Kurt Schrader to divide 2.4 million acres of federal O&C lands into harvestable and conservation trust areas is unlikely to be approved in the current Congress, but prospects could improve next year. It would take at least three years after enactment for those lands to produce any revenues for local counties.
It’s been a long, hard slog through the wilderness for Oregon’s timber counties, and the results of Tuesday’s election in Josephine County offer little reason to hope that there’s an oasis anywhere in sight.
