Judge Charles Hague presented his 2010 budget requests to the Board of Commissioners on Monday, essentially a repeat of this year’s budgets with the addition of funding for raises and retirement payouts.

County commissioners are in the midst of budget work sessions and hearings with elected officials and department heads. Hague’s budget review was held as a hearing in accordance with state law.

Hague oversees four budgets: Juvenile Court/ Probation, Probate Court, Youth Detention Center and Felony Delinquent Care and Custody.

Assistant court administrator Kathy Thompson said the budgets proposed by the judge reflect 3-percent pay increases as provided for in labor contracts. YDC’s bargaining agreement has a wage reopener in 2010.

The budgets would not add any employees but would restore staffing to levels present at the start of 2009 before a series of budget cuts forced layoffs and, at the beginning of October, closure of the YDC during the last quarter. Hague is challenging the commissioners’ decision in the Ohio Supreme Court, to cut his budget further after reaching a negotiated settlement in June. Commissioners made the cuts after it became evident revenue estimates for 2009 had been too optimistic.

Hague’s 2010 funding request for YDC is for $1,006,069, with a $65,000 revenue offset. Commissioners cut his 2009 budget to $750,000. His 2010 request is $191,069 more than what commissioners actually gave him this year.

The budget would reopen YDC with 24 employees, Hague said. The lion’s share of the budget goes for employee expenses: $568,930 for salaries and $120,000 for health insurance, plus $79,650 for Public Employees Retirement System and $6,500 for State Teachers Retirement System.

The facility would operate as it has since 2002, when the state pulled about $150,000 in funding. Since then, only 12 of the 20 beds in the facility have been used. In addition, the scope of operation has been limited to holding offenders until they can be transported to a state confinement facility.

Hague said it would take another $130,000 to $140,000 next year to open the other eight beds and also use the facility for short-term confinements imposed as a court-ordered disciplinary action.

The budgets for Juvenile Probation and Juvenile Court were combined for the 2010 budget. The total request is $813,493, which includes workers’ compensation premiums and health insurance. In the past, those items were handled as lump sum within the county’s general fund. In the 2010 budgets, they are being allocated to each department’s budget.

Taking into account this new approach, Hague’s Juvenile Court and Probation budget is $136,296 more than what commissioners appropriated for 2009 in their last round of budget cuts.

Thompson said nine staff members have been laid off this year and two had their hours reduced to part-time status. The new budget would staff the court and Probation Department with 19 employees. Commissioners wanted to know if there were positions that could be cut.

“We were at a minimum level of staffing before cuts began, so the answer to the question is no,” Hague said.

Hague’s Probate Court budget request is for $349,259, which is $42,172 more than commissioners gave the court in the most-recent appropriations. He has put three full-time employees to part time and did not replace a clerk who left in June.

Hague asked commissioners if they have given any thought to prioritizing their budget, and Board President Peggy Carlo said she, personally, has done so with courts and safety services getting first consideration. Hague said it appeared to him all departments had been treated with “a broad brush.”

Commissioners say they have not completed the budget process, and County Administrator Janet Discher said she has not calculated the spread between proposed budgets and how much the county expects to have in revenue. Commissioner Joseph Moroski said there are a lot of unknowns and the county will probably enter the new year with a temporary budget. Among the unknowns are the huge state deficit, which could mean reductions in local government funds, the ramifications of a state casino bill (Issue 3) passing or failing, and the economy. Sales-tax revenues have continued to drop in the county, despite government programs to stimulate spending.