Conflicts in the St. Louis County government continued on Wednesday, November 29 as the County Council met to discuss whether they would be able to pass a 2018 budget by the end of the year.
Several council members expressed concerns that they did not have enough information to put together a budget, saying other members of the county government had not gotten back to them with information they had requested.
“We have no figures, we have nothing to work with here,” Councilwoman Hazel Erby said.
The council began by discussing possible uses of the funds from the county’s Proposition P, approved in a vote on April 4. The proposition approved a sales tax raise of one-half of one percent, earmarking the funds for public safety expenditures like hiring more police officers, providing dashboard and body cameras and increasing officer training.
A budget for use of these funds was created by St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar, but some employees of the police department are unhappy with it. The meeting was attended by members of civilian professional staff and security officers who felt more of the funds should go towards providing them with raises, which they said they had received infrequently in the past.
The council, though, did not have the information they wanted to make that decision.
“Have we seen the breakdown, at all, of anything they’ve proposed to do with the Prop P money?” Erby asked.
Her colleagues muttered their agreement that they had not.
“I suggest that we get a copy of that, because what I would like to see happen with the Prop P money is that they go back to the drawing table completely, because you left off so many people – the security guards and case managers, justice services, justice support staff,” Erby said. “All those people have been left out or given menial raises.”
The members of the council expressed uncertainty about what Proposition P funds would be spent on and whether there were areas they could pull funds from for additional raises.
Even beyond Proposition P, the future of St. Louis County’s budget is far from secure. In November, County Executive Steve Stenger issued his budget proposal, and it looked like bad news for the county’s financial solvency.
“While the public safety sales tax is budgeted to maintain a surplus in each of the next five years, existing county services will continue annual deficits that have occurred each year since 2014,” the proposal said. “Absent any changes to revenue structure or programs and services, this portion of reserves will be exhausted in 2019.”
Despite this, Stenger’s budget proposal did not contain any substantial cuts, and County Council Chair Sam Page is concerned. Page, who has previously called the situation an “impending financial crisis”, said at the meeting that the county will have to either cut services or increase revenue.
As the meeting wore on, the members of the council consulted the county charter for answers about what would happen if they were unable to pass a budget by the end of the year.
The charter calls for the budget from the previous year, divided into proportional one-month increments, to be distributed until the council is able to pass a new budget. But it’s not yet clear if this would mean new sources of funding, like the Proposition P money, could not be dispersed. It could also spell trouble for departments like transportation and parks, which face higher expenses during the upcoming winter months than the rest of the year.
The meeting was also attended by Jeff Waegner, the county’s chief of Policy in the county executive’s office. According to Waegner, the council members had adequate time to ask any questions when their meetings were attended by county department heads.
Councilwoman Rochelle Walton Gray disagreed. “We had questions after most of the meetings, if not all of them,” Gray said. According to the council members, those questions were not answered, and budget director Paul Kreidler, who was asked to attend Wednesday’s meeting, did not.
“We had this conversation six weeks ago, that just because the council hasn’t been engaged, in the past decade, significantly in the budget process doesn’t mean that we’re not going to look at our responsibility as it’s spelled out in the charter,” Page said. “By the charter, we have a pretty big role in the budget process.”
Erby said in previous years the council has been provided with immediate responses by department directors, but something has changed this year.
“I just know that it’s different now than it has been in the past,” Erby said.
This is not the council’s first clash with Stenger’s office in recent months. In October, the County Council filed a lawsuit against the executive’s office, alleging that a current hiring freeze in the county auditor’s office was infringing on the council’s jurisdiction and preventing essential functions of the county.
Page said the county council had been deprived of essential information, whether intentionally or not.
“Most of the answers to our questions were ‘we’ll get back to you on that,’” Page said. “And, you know, they’re not getting back to us.”
Jessica Karins is an editorial intern for the St. Louis American from Webster University.
