County budget committee objects to spending increase

SKOWHEGAN – As it plodded through the $4.2 million proposed budget in a pair of recent meetings, the Somerset County Budget Committee made one overriding decision, according to Chairman D. Dwight Dogherty.

A 20 percent increase is way too much.

As it continued Monday night to review individual department budgets, the committee rejected the $600,000 communications budget.

“We unanimously rejected this budget,” Dogherty said Wednesday. “It represents a $160,000 increase. One of the problems we have with this is that money we raised for communications last year was expended for other things.

“No one is watching the budget over there,” said Dogherty. “We create a budget, and it is meaningless. The Budget Committee has no authority to monitor how the money we appropriate and approve is expended.”

Dogherty said an example was that money appropriated last year for a digital telephone recorder for the communications center instead was spent on computers. He also pointed out waste in the budget, asking, “Why do we need nine sets of Maine statutes in the courthouse when each set costs between $700 and $800 a year to update?”

He also questioned the salary figure proposed for the newly elected register of probate. He said the salary should not be the same as the one paid to the previous register, who had 21 years experience.

Other budget problems include a request by the newly elected Commissioner Tracey Rotondi, who has requested family health insurance coverage at an annual cost of about $10,000. Her position pays only $5,700 a year.

Dogherty also questioned the wisdom of paying for half of the repairs to the Kingsbury-Mayfield dam, a cost of $15,500 that Doreen Sheive, the state’s fiscal administrator for unorganized territories, cautioned the commissioners against last week.

Sheive also questioned a 25 percent salary hike for the county’s road consultant and suggested the position be placed out to bid.

On Thursday, Dogherty conceded that some of the expenditures in Communications Director Dale Sweet’s budget are “one-time charges, such as antennas, line charges, computer purchases. Some of this will go away.”

But meanwhile, the committee shipped the communications budget back to Sweet for review. Dogherty said he will be meeting next week with Sweet and Commissioner Chairman Joseph Bowman to go over the communications’ expenditures line by line.

The large increase in the communications budget is just one of many budget problems, Dogherty said.

This year, the proposed overall budget represents more than an $800,000 increase and includes a 23.2 percent increase in health insurance costs, employee raises and funds to cover workers’ compensation costs. The workers’ compensation increase, a 1.38 percent hike, was due to the loss of a Somerset County deputy, Charles Baker, in a cruiser crash last December while he was on duty.

Dogherty said that loss was above what the county’s insurer expected, and now they are trying to recover the amount they paid out.