At a meeting between the county commissioners and excise board Tuesday morning, the excise board voted two to one to accept the "county commissioners' budget as presented to the excise board."
Excise board member Charles Sloan of Vian voted against the commission budget while board members Yvonne Nance of Central and Dave Morgan of Muldrow voted for the commission budget. Nance made the motion to accept the budget and Morgan seconded her motion.
After the vote Morgan told the county commissioners, "Gentlemen, you have a budget."
The agreement settles an argument over the county budget that has raged for three fiscal years, beginning with the 2003-4 budget.
The commissioners and excise board members met in an attempt to reach a decision on the budget Tuesday. A hearing on the budget was set by Judge Mike Norman for 1:30 p.m. Wednesday. Norman ordered the two boards in June to reach an agreement on the budget by the time of the hearing or face time in jail.
The 2005-6 budget will cut county offices about 35 percent, District 1 Commissioner Bruce Tabor noted.
Sheriff Johnny Philpot, who has continually opposed the cut, said he may have to lay off five employees to operate within his budgeted amount.
Philpot has said in the past that he may file a lawsuit against the county in order to maintain his budget. Tuesday he said he would review the budget before making a decision.
The three county commissioners and three excise board members discussed the needs of county offices, and how those offices were to be funded for about an hour before the vote.
Morgan, who was recently appointed to the excise board by State Sen. Kenneth Corn (D-Poteau), said, "I did what I thought was right. It wasn't personal."
He made the same statement to Philpot after the meeting.
Morgan recently replaced Dan Shamblin of Muldrow on the excise board. The state senator appoints one of the excise board members, but Corn had never made Shamblin his official appointee during his term.
Tabor noted that the estimate of needs submitted by county offices totaled about $3 million, "and we only have about $1.8 million."
The budget maker for the county had cut all offices by about 35 percent to stay within the $1.8 million budget, Tabor said.
Sloan has argued throughout the budget controversy that the excise board's duty is to fund constitutional - elected offices - first. Those offices include the sheriff, county clerk, county treasurer, court clerk, county assessor, district attorney (who receives only office expenses from the county budget) and county commissioners.
The county commissioners work mostly with road funds. But the commissioners argued that all county offices should be funded, which includes the county election board, OSU Extension Service, and county emergency management. The election board, extension service, and court clerk also receive state funds.
During the past three years the commissioners have struggled to find funding for Sequoyah County 9-1-1 and the county jail. The jail was under the direction of the sheriff, but when the county's new jail was built, county commissioners organized a trust authority to oversee jail operations. When that was done the excise board took all funding from the jail, since it was no longer under direction of the sheriff's office, or a constitutional office.
Since that time the jail authority, which is made up of the three county commissioners and the sheriff, have worked to make the jail self supporting by housing prisoners for the state. The commissioners are also working on making the 9-1-1 service self supporting, and, if voters approve a cell-phone fee of 50 cents in a Dec. 13 election, the service is expected to be closer to self supporting.
At Tuesday's meeting, the commissioners noted that the only way the excise board's budget would work was if employee health insurance was cut at the first of the year, and an additional $80 to $85 a month was paid by employees to maintain their health insurance, and if liability insurance was dropped.
"The sheriff can't even take a car out on the road if we have no liability insurance," Tabor said.
"I don't think we can afford that (insurance cuts)," Tabor said. "We've got to cut the offices (budgets)."
Sloan objected to the commissioners including their salaries in the county budget, rather than taking the salaries from the road funds. "That's the first time you've ever done that," he said.
"My main problem," Sloan said, "is your wages being in there, and I hate to see the sheriff's office decimated like it's going to be."
The commissioners' original county budget did not include their salaries, which were added to a later version of the budget. The amount is $150,000 or $50,000 for each commissioner. The commissioners noted that they had some concern about taking their salaries from state money designated for roads, although they have always done so.
The sheriff's budget will drop from over $535,000 allotted by the excise board to about $369,000 in the commissioners' budget.
The sheriff, the commissioners noted, also has a cash account which is funded by fees from legal services the sheriff provides, such as serving legal papers. The commissioners noted the sheriff could pay for part-time employees out of that cash account, which has about $250,000.
Philpot said after the meeting "Grants and cash accounts can't be considered as budgeted money. That's what the law says. All salaries should be paid from budgeted funds, not cash accounts."
Philpot said he has 19 employees, including 10 deputies. "The biggest part of my budget is payroll," he said. "This will not be enough money to provide adequate law enforcement for the county. The high visibility of law enforcement is the number one deterrent to crime. We've had a record number of arrests and a record number of convictions.
"You reduce funds for law enforcement and you don't hurt that office, you hurt the public. Criminals watch for that kind of thing."
Philpot said he uses his cash account to replace vehicles, at the rate of about two a year, but he was hoping to replace more than that this year. He said he has two vehicles with over 100,000 miles and some officers are using vehicles obtained through drug forfeitures, and those have over 200,000 miles.
"I don't want to see any county employees do without insurance," Philpot said. "But it's coming down to robbing Peter to pay Paul.
"I know there's a shortage of funding, but I don't want to lose any employees. Both sides have valid points," Philpot said.
"I'm looking at losing five full-time people," Philpot said. "This puts the sheriff's office back to about 1980, and I don't want to go backwards. But when the going gets tough, the tough get going."
Tabor said after the meeting, "Yes, I am happy we have a budget. I hope the judge lets us do the budget so we can go ahead and do the tax rolls."
The budget controversy delayed payment of ad valorem taxes last year.
"We are pleased and hopeful this matter is resolved," District 3 Commissioner Cleon Harrell said.
