As the economic crisis continues, New Hampshire towns face rising costs and falling revenues.
And one of those bills is the town’s share of county expenses.
In Sullivan County, that expense has been especially painful.
The Vermont Standard’s Kevin Forrest reports.
Sullivan County’s budget woes have taken on a particular drama.
It swirls around a nursing home shortfall that has swelled to nearly $4 million dollars.
Local officials bitterly charge each other with mismanagement and micromanagement and partisan politics.
In the meantime, property owners in New Hampshire’s second poorest county are shouldering the shortfall.
Jeff Barrette chairs the three-member Sullivan County Commission.
He said a three million dollar deficit first appeared in the 2007 budget.
This year it grew by nearly another million.
Barrette says somehow the mix of lower-paying Medicaid patients at the 156-bed facility was grossly underestimated.
Barrette – We budgeted for an ideal, and not for reality, which put us in this position.
Part of that reality, says Barrette, is that Medicaid’s reimbursements to county nursing homes are inadequate.
Greg Chanis is the Sullivan County Administrator.
Chanis - At the current rate of reimbursement for a Medicaid resident, it’s fairly accepted, at least among the county administrators of the health care facilities, is that we lose about $50 a day on a Medicaid resident.
But other counties have not faced the problem to the same degree.
Retired legislator Fred King has managed county affairs both in Coos County and the statehouse.
King - It’s unusual for a county to suddenly find that they’ve got, you know, over a period of a couple of years, have run into that kind of problem.
Frustrated Sullivan County taxpayers facing a huge tax bill turned to their local leaders.
Steve White is a selectboard member in Sunapee.
He says because of its wealth his town ends up paying 25 percent of the county’s tax load.
He describes a typical phone call from his constituents.
Steve White - What the hell’s going on here, Steve? How come it’s going up so much? Those are the general comments you get.
Because county taxes are based on property values, it’s easy to find inequities.
Sunapee Town Manager Donna Nashawaddy says that if her town were in adjoining Merrimack county, its county tax bill would be a million dollars lower.
Nashawady - In 2008, again we fall into the category where we pay more to the county than it costs us to run our own police, library, fire, town offices, recreation, etc.
But it’s not just the weathy towns that are feeling the pinch.
Claremont City Councilor Jeff Goss says his city’s 2 million dollar county tab includes half a million just to service the county’s debt.
Goss – That $500,000 is a year’s worth of paving projects. That $500,000 is an expansion of some other facility. It’s also money that could be used in a plethora of ways but we can’t because it has to go to the county to cover the deficit.
Sullivan County Commissioner Barrette says that starting with this year’s budget, he expects the shortfall to be paid off in three years..
And Administrator Chanis says the county’s current budget increase was cut by a third.
But taxpayers remain skeptical.
Sunapee Selectboard member White says he’ll believe the county’s got a sound fiscal policy when he sees it.
And in the meantime, he and others will be watching carefully.
White - We’ll be on ‘em like a cheap suit on a bum. Believe me.
The county tax bill is due Dec. 17.
For NHPR news, this is Kevin Forrest.
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