Trumbull County Auditor threatens to sue commissioners over budget cuts

Trumbull County Auditor Martha Yoder has penned a letter to the Trumbull County Board of Commissioners threatening to file a lawsuit over proposed budget cuts.

Trumbull County Board of Commissioners President Rick Hernandez tells 21 News Yoder presented this letter to commissioners at Tuesday's workshop meeting.

According to the letter, these proposed cuts could threaten critical services from her office and other county offices as well.

The letter states that the Auditor's Office's contribution to the general fund revenue is $3,286,000, but the budget number is $3 million, which is less than what the office contributes.

"I cannot continue to adequately provide mandated or critical services at anything under a budget of $3,576.261.89. Note that this would still result in layoffs," the letter reads.

Yoder goes on to say if the budget number remains at $3 million, the Auditor's Office would need to lay off more than 40% of its staff with layoffs tentatively scheduled to start April 1.

"Despite Commissioner [Denny] Malloy's optimistic view that any layoffs would wait until the end of the year, if nothing changes, waiting till the end of the year to do layoffs would result in closing my office for the last 2-3 months of the year," Yoder wrote.

Yoder goes on to call commissioners' cuts "draconian" and slams commissioners and addressed the argument that they cut budgets for all departments and offices.

"You did not cut everyone 10% less than last year's actuals. You did not force everyone to potentially lay off more than 40% of their workforce. You did not reduce a budget on any other department or office to less than they contribute to the general fund revenues," Yoder wrote.

Despite that April 1 date, some services from the Auditor's Office have stopped immediately. For example, all live streams and video recordings of commissioners' meetings from Auditor's Office staff has stopped, meaning Tuesday's meeting was not live streamed.

Yoder told 21 News commissioners can still stream the meetings since they own the equipment to do so. Commissioner Hernandez told us commissioners are actively working to find alternative methods to stream without Auditor's Office staff.

Hernandez added that Commissioner Tony Bernard has made some calls regarding alternative streaming methods, but says he did not know who Bernard called or how those calls went.

Another immediate change Yoder highlighted is that her office is stepping away from ARPA tasks effective immediately saying she would not have the manpower to continue them. That responsibility will now fall into Commissioners' hands.

Yoder laid out a list of tasks for commissioners to do in her letter including the allocation of remaining funds to pre-approved projects, tracking those projects, obtaining and proofreading resolutions, 

Additionally, Yoder said education of financial staff for other offices is reduced drastically effective immediately and noted the impacts this would have.

"The Sheriff has a very good [chief financial officer] who unfortunately has no experience in government fund accounting. It is our recommendation that he take a class. [Senior Accountant Christy] Sostaric will no longer provide this training for anyone outside of our office," Yoder said.

Yoder adds that Sostaric will also no longer be working on a solution to the dealing with the formula issues for the reimbursement for public defender costs by the municipal courts, leaving this issue to commissioners.

Future impacts could include the defunding of the tax map, the Auditor's Office stepping back from the budgeting process, real estate combines and splits taking longer, accounts payable being slower and much more.

Yoder says there are two solutions to the problem including using $2 million from the former Clerk of Courts for the operating budget and immediately beginning the process of passing a quarter percent sales tax increase for the county.

"Note that because you have delayed so much in this process, the two things listed above may not provide enough to prevent layoffs in some areas," Yoder wrote.

In regards to the sales tax, Hernandez told 21 News he believes it to be "inevitable" under his watch, but said the issue would need to be brought to all commissioners to vote on.

Hernandez says that sales tax would generate $8 million per year and said had this been implemented years ago, the county might not be in the situation it is in now.

You can read Yoder's letter in its entirety in the PDF below.