Mar 3, 2016 3 min read

WAYNESBURG – The Greene County commissioners are joining county officials from across the state urging legislators and the governor to pass a budget on time this year.

The commissioners during their Thursday morning voting meeting passed a resolution demanding the state’s leaders negotiate and pass the budget before the June 30 deadline so human services programs won’t go without funding as they did for six months last year.

“We want to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” county Chief Clerk Jeff Marshall said about last year’s budget debacle that is still unresolved.

The nonbinding resolution joins more than 20 other counties that have passed motions asking for the state to avoid a similar impasse that pitted the Republican-controlled legislature against Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf. A stopgap budget was passed in December, but Wolf line-item vetoed major portions of it in January except to release basic education funding and money for human services programs.

Human services departments in many of the state’s 67 counties, along with school districts, were hit the hardest by last year’s budget stalemate.

Greene County’s Department of Human Services began tightening its spending last fall and made only essential purchases to keep the agency operating. The county took out a $4 million tax anticipation loan in December to pay back the money it had used from its Act 13 impact fee funds that kept human services afloat for six months.

“We’re doing fine and paid up where we need to be,” Human Services Director Karen Bennett said.

But trouble is once again looming with the upcoming budget battle.

Bennett said there will be a delay in funding for their Children and Youth Services program in the next three months. Those payments won’t be made until July at the earliest, but another budget battle could delay that even longer.

That means human services is continuing to watch its spending in case problems linger.

“Our commissioners are back to being conservative because there could be another budget impasse,” Bennett said.

The resolution asks the state to continue funding human services programs regardless of when the two sides can agree to a budget. Commissioners Dave Coder said the resolution won’t solve the budget issue, but it will hopefully spur state leaders to work on a solution rather than continue to argue.

“We’re very concerned about the burdens it places on the counties across the state. It was stressful,” Coder said. “This is a nicer way of doing it.”

Also during the meeting, the commissioners hired Management Engineering Corp. of Bridgeville to serve as the county’s project manager on construction of the new intersection at the Greene County Airport. The commissioners agreed to pay MEC $148,630 for its role in the project.

The commissioners also approved a preliminary investigations proposal from EADS Architects Inc. for $6,700 to conduct preliminary investigations on three other county projects. The projects are repairs to the courthouse porch, install a new elevator at the Fort Jackson Building and repair the roof of the bathhouse at the Carmichaels pool.

A five-year lease agreement between the county and Enterprise Fleet Management was approved for multiple vehicles that various departments will use. The vehicle lease agreement first proposed last month is expected to save the county about $140,000 over the next 10 years.