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Resource revenue won't be forever
Exacerbating those efforts to come up with a balanced ledger sheet is the uncertain fallout from the state's failure to pass a timely budget, and that has left most county governments in a state of limbo of sorts.
The state cut human services 25 percent across the board, but as Greene County Commissioner Pam Snyder said, "We don't know what that breaks down to, county by county. Hopefully, it won't be as deep as we feared."
Since aboout 50 percent of the programs and services in the county are funded by state dollars, deep cuts could force the county into a position it has managed to avoid for some time.
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During the protracted state budget battle, Greene County was forced to ask several employees to accept voluntary layoffs. Several of those employees were in the human services area. Those employees have since been called back to work, the only exceptions being those in grant-funded human service positions and a couple of employees, who for personal reasons, asked to remain out temporarily.
One thing that caught our eye last week was an agreement the county signed with Tanglewood Exploration LLC of Fort Worth, Texas. The county will receive 20 percent in royalties from any oil and gas extracted from these properties and is expected to receive an undisclosed upfront portion of the proposed future royalties that will come off future payments 50 percent at a time.
That could go a long way in offsetting the impact of any cuts in state money this budget year.
But this is too remindful of past efforts when the county fell back on "reliable" income sources, such as coal revenue. It is somewhat disconcerting that there has been this continued reliance on coal values being translated into more property taxes from the coal.
We do not expect the mining of coal to dry up any time soon in Greene County, but nothing is forever. And we fear the reliance on coal revenues to support, in part, the operation of county government can create a false sense of security.
We are starting to get the same feeling about projected royalties from other natural resources such as oil and gas.
Last year, we were critical of the commissioners for dipping into a savings fund to offset an anticipated $1 million more in spending in 2009. We hope that doesn't happen again.
There was an encouraging statement from the commissioners a week ago when Snyder said the county held the line on a lot of things and it was very tight in its spending. That demonstrates to us there has been some prudent planning at the county level.
Nonetheless, when the county does get its numbers from the state, we expect that budget crunch time is going to go right down to the last second.
