Federal money, big department cuts help county balance budget

The Lincoln County Commissioners passed a $14.9 million budget for fiscal year 2025 at last week’s meeting with property taxes increasing.

Commissioners Brent Teske and Jim Hammons were present at the Sept. 4 meeting to approve the final budget. Commissioner Josh Letcher didn’t make the meeting after reportedly being stuck in traffic delays on Highway 37 due to various road improvement projects.

Federal money along with large cuts to some department’s budgets helped the county slash what was initially a $2.7 million deficit to a balanced budget. After determining what the levied mills were worth, the deficit was still nearly $637,000.

The county used $636,958 from $12 million in Local Assistance and Tribal Consistency Fund (LATCF) money it received in Fiscal Years 2022 and 2023. In 2023, the initial shortfall was $1.6 million.

LATCF is a general revenue enhancement program that provides additional assistance to eligible Tribal governments, eligible revenue sharing counties and eligible revenue sharing consolidated governments. It was part of the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARP) that resulted from the COVID pandemic.

“We kept that money aside for that purpose,” Teske said at the Aug. 28 meeting when the commission gave the budget preliminary approval. “We appreciate everyone’s efforts to cutting their budgets to where we can stay functional and legal.”

For homes valued at $100,000, their property taxes will increase $100.01. For a home worth $300,000, the increase is $300.02 and for a home valued at $600,000, it is $600.05. Those property tax increases are identical to what occurred a year ago.

The county has invested some of the LATCF money and Teske hopes that will help the county in the future.

The library and sheriff’s office saw the biggest cuts.

The sheriff’s office was facing a $500,000 budget reduction target, but it will be getting four new vehicles with money coming from Payment in Lieu of Tax funds totaling $320,000. PILT are Federal payments that help local governments offset losses in property taxes due to the existence of nontaxable Federal lands within their boundaries.

Two vehicles were ordered in October 2022, but their delivery was slowed by supply chain issues that began during the Covid pandemic.

The department won’t be getting a $75,000 upgrade in camera improvements in the detention center.

Sheriff Darren Short said the system is very antiquated.

“It’s used to monitor inmates and having a decent resolution from multiple sites could help us respond more quickly to attempted suicides and assaults,” Short said. “We also had to trim from our fuel expenses, officer supplies, ammunition, pretty much anywhere we could.”

Short said he wants to see commissioners lobby the state legislature about Initiative 105. Approved by the state’s voters in the November 1986 general election, it froze county property tax levels and they can only be increased at one-half the rate of inflation for the three prior years.

“We need to look at counties that have prospered,” Short said. “Lincoln, Sanders, Mineral, Beaverhead counties have suffered the worst. We are in dire need of legislative changes to help this situation.”

Short also said, “We’re drowning and we need someone to throw us a life preserver. It’s hard to cover the county with the same amount of deputies we had in the 1980s.”

Barb Hvizdak, the chair of the county library Board of Trustees, said in a recent interview with The Western News that, “We thought we could be in worse shape.”

But she said the cuts, following the failed effort in June to form a library district, would still affect the county’s libraries.

“We have a vacancy in Libby that we won’t fill,” Hvizdak said. “If we have people out sick, we could have short-term closures. We’ll also have fewer new books and fewer hours of operation in the basement section of the Libby branch.”

She added that part-time employees in Troy and Eureka had given notice of their intent to resign. Eureka's head librarian, Siri Larsen, remains at the helm. So, too, does Sharee Miller in Troy.

County commissioners approved 1.5% pay raises for elected and non-elected officials and non-elected employees.

The pay increase took effect July 1, 2024. It’s a $46,000 increase in the budget, according to county officials. The county will pay $3,146,650 in salaries for the fiscal year 2025.

County officials have defended the cost of living increases over the last four of five years as a way of keeping pay competitive in an attempt to avoid drastic staff turnover.

Commissioners were hopeful that a veto override on marijuana tax legislation could inject $368,000 into the road department budget. But that didn’t happen when legislators failed to override Gov. Greg Gianforte’s veto of Senate Bill 442 last year.

Teske also noted that levied mills decreased in value a little more than $1,000 in value, allowing the county to levy five additional mills.

“When you calculate that, it’s only a budget increase of $235,000, which in the world of government is not a huge boon by any means,” Teske said.

Rises in insurance costs and drastically fewer funds from timber and mining receipts have offset the increases in property tax revenues from more people moving to the county. According to a 2014 story in The Western News, the forest harvest in 2012 was 24 million board feet. In the 1980s, board feet harvests often topped 200 million board feet.

Near the end of 2023, it was reported the forest harvest was a little more than five million board feet.