The State of Lehigh County Government?

Those looking to cut Big Government should know that Lehigh County’s workforce is smaller than it was 20 years ago, County Executive Don Cunningham told business and community leaders Thursday.

In his “State of the County” address before the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce at Coca Cola Park in Allentown, Cunningham defended last fall’s 16 percent property tax increase, saying it was necessary to keep the county fiscally sound while funding vital programs in the face of the weak economy.

“Last year was the first time in the county’s history that real estate tax revenues went down,” Cunningham said.

“Our budget this year is $22 million less than it was last year,” he said. “We maintain a healthy $21 million reserve fund. Our employee pension fund, unlike so many other governments, is fully funded by any relevant measure.”

Cunningham, a Democrat, praised former County Executive David Bausch, a Republican, for ending lifetime medical benefits for county workers in 1987. The county still has to spend “legacy costs” of  $141.7 million to provide health care for those hired before 1987, including $5.5 million this year. But those costs will go down each year, he said.

Just as his administration benefited from Bausch’s foresight, Cunningham said he is trying to do the same for future leaders by requiring county employees to pay 20 percent of their health care coverage.

This year the county is negotiating contracts with four labor unions – the prison guards, courthouse workers, and employees of Cedarbrook nursing home and health and human services. Cunningham pointed out that Commissioner Chairman Dean Browning had led earlier efforts to freeze salaries for 147 nurses at Cedarbrook and 27 human services supervisors who belong to “meet and discuss” bargaining units. Unlike traditional unions, those units can’t strike but must accept what the county offers.

“We will continue to find ways to do more with less and to reduce costs in our operations,” Cunningham said. “I am equally committed, however, to not arbitrarily cut back on our core responsibilities because it is politically popular. We will not apply the ‘wrong remedies’ … such as arbitrarily gutting $19 million from our budget.”

That was reference to the budget battle last October when four Republican county commissioners backed a maneuver to scrap the tax increase and send the budget back to Cunningham for steep cuts.

Cunningham gave a breakdown of how county tax dollars are spent, saying about 70 cents of every dollar goes to pay for law enforcement. That includes the courts, prisons, probation, investigating and prosecuting crimes, sheriff’s operations and emergency response. Another 14 cents of each dollar is for debt service, 7 cents to run, maintain and improve buildings, parks, bridges and ball fields, 6 cents for human services, and 3 cents for administration and other overhead. 

To make those tax dollars stretch further, Cunningham said he’d push for more regionalization of services. For example, the county hopes this year to launch its Crime Data Center in conjunction with DeSales University. The center will analyze incidents from all 17 police departments in the county to better spot patterns and solve crimes. “Small departments will have resources they never had,” he said later. “Criminals don’t think about municipal boundaries.”

Following the speech, Commissioner Chairman Dean Browning agreed that the state of the county is good but said it “can’t be as generous as we have been in the past” on raises for workers. As part of their contracts last year, some workers received a 4 percent general raise plus another 5 percent if they were eligible for a “step” increase. Such pay hikes are completely out of whack with the private sector and what most county residents can expect, Browning said.