Counties Walk Budget Tightrope, Avoid Big Falls Stevens And Pend Oreille Budgets Not As Bad As Once Feared Despite Revenue Losses

Stevens and Pend Oreille counties escaped Hulk Hogan-style budgetary choke holds with fewer bruises than might have been expected.

Pend Oreille County commissioners adopted a $5 million 1997 current expense budget Tuesday that avoids layoffs despite major revenue losses.

In Stevens County, where officials feared as many as 20 workers might be laid off, only three people will lose their jobs. Eight other positions that were vacant will be eliminated.

“We were very fortunate,” Stevens County Commissioner J.D. Anderson said. “Most of it was taken care of by attrition.”

Auditor Tim Gray said two positions added to the county Central Services Department last year weren’t filled when officials realized this year’s revenue projections were off the mark.

The three relatively new employees who will be laid off include a mapping technician in the Central Services Department, the District Court probation officer and a combination court reporter and Superior Court secretary.

Gray said officials hope to get county maps updated by piggybacking with a Forest Service project and tapping state growth management money.

He said the Superior Court position was created because of the feud between Judges Larry Kristianson and Fred Stewart. Stewart and Court Administrator Judy Americk are retiring, and Kristianson and Judge-elect Rebecca Baker agree that Americk’s replacement will be able to handle the laid-off worker’s duties, Gray said.

Positions to be eliminated through attrition include a second mapping technician, two workers in the auditor’s office, one in the assessor’s office, an assistant clerk in the commissioner’s office, and a clerk and an inspector in the Building Department.

Commissioners balanced the budget by taking $400,000 from their $500,000 contingency fund. Gray said laying off more employees wouldn’t have helped much. The county would have to pay about 60 percent of their salaries in unemployment compensation and would get nothing in return.

Still, he said more cuts may be needed in the middle of the year if revenue again falls short of projections.

“My fingers are still crossed, hoping to do $400,000 better than what I’m putting on paper,” Gray said. “If my budget comes true, then I have a $400,000 problem to look at in 1998 because the contingency money won’t be there.”

In Pend Oreille County, Chief Deputy Auditor Curtis Hiebert said commissioners reluctantly balanced their budget by pulling $350,000 from a reserve fund created by selling timber from county land.

The crunch was caused largely by a pending dispute over the “privilege tax” paid by the separate Pend Oreille County Public Utility District for the electricity it sells. The district discovered last year that it may have been improperly paying the 2.14-percent tax on electricity sold to Ponderay Newsprint since paper mill opened in 1988.

State law says the privilege tax, which utility districts pay in lieu of property tax, applies to electricity delivered over lines “owned by the district.” Ponderay Newsprint and the federal Bonneville Power Administration own all of the lines and equipment used to deliver Pend Oreille PUD power to the mill.

Because of ambiguities in the law, the potential refund owed by the county could range from $423,320 to $910,631 - not counting interest.

Coincidentally, the amount is roughly the same as the $1.1 million in back taxes the county collected in October when a property tax dispute with Ponderay Newsprint was settled. So commissioners have set the money aside to cover the potential privilege tax refund.

Aside from the possible refund, the privilege-tax dispute dented the county budget by eliminating about $480,000 that might have been collected in 1997. The collections probably will be restored by 1998 because the utility district is building its own transmission line to serve Ponderay Newsprint and other customers.

Loss of state and federal money for a program to remove noxious Eurasian milfoil water plants from the Pend Oreille River also siphoned about $100,000 from the county current expense fund.

, DataTimes