Commissioner Places Blames For Budget Woes Squarely On Washington

Commissioner Mark Schoenrock expressed his frustration with Washington, DC, at a meeting of the Jefferson County Commissioners on Tuesday, September 17.“This morning, we come together to consider the budget of Jefferson County, Nebraska. This has been one of our more challenging budgets to prepare, and we share the same challenge as a county government that we do as individuals, as families, as businesses, as city government, county government, state government. The problem of addressing the budget does not reside with us as individuals or with us as families, with us as county government or even with state government. The challenge that we face resides in Washington, DC,” said Schoenrock. “In the last four years, since Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been the leaders of our federal government, the Consumer Price Index has increased by 19.7 percent, those are prices that we are all paying as individuals, as families, as local and state government, the challenges face us, whether it’s costs to pay our people, to pay our insurance, equipment, supplies, parts and the services. All of these things are required to provide essential county government services that serve our fellow citizens here in Jefferson County.”“Irresponsible spending in Washington, DC has led to challenges for all of us, and we all are feeling that pain,” said Schoenrock. “Unlike Washington DC, we do not have a printing press in the back room that we can make up the difference in deficit spending.” Schoenrock also defended the increase to the tax request as necessary to keep up with increasing cost, “Our board struggled with this budget and we made a number of cuts, but I am proud to say that we have maintained the same level of service across all of our departments to serve our citizens. With this budget, we have also maintained a reserve of $1.7 million. That sounds like a lot of money, but it’s really not. We have considered using some of our reserve to maybe buy down the budget a little bit, but we are maintaining that as a reserve, that’s a rainy day fund to take care of any unforeseen costs.”Schoenrock pointed out the increase is, “Well under the rate of inflation, all the while maintaining the same level of service to serve our citizens. This year, our overall levy rate was decreased by our board by 9.4 percent, our county valuation increased 13.36 percent. And so, we were able to significantly decrease our levy, resulting in the tax asking increase of only 3.47 percent.”

John R. Lampe

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