By Blake Chambers
Washington Times-Herald
WASHINGTON — With few exceptions, Daviess County department heads requested 2 percent pay raises for their employees in 2011. During a day-long hearing on Wednesday, the Daviess County Council presided over budget requests from 30 different local taxing units including, among others, West Boggs Park, various fire districts, and libraries in Washington and Odon, in addition to those from regular county departments. The hearing continued Thursday morning with 18 requests from the city of Washington, towns and townships in the county. In preparation for the hearings, the council has been in possession of written submissions from the various units and departments for the past two weeks. In Wednesday’s hearing, the office of Daviess County Coroner Dr. Stephen Cullen requested a 41 percent budget increase, most of which consisted of a proposed increase in funds for autopsies from $25,000 to $45,000. Fourth District Councilman Kenneth Solliday wondered aloud during the hearing why the amount for autopsies was so much more than in 2009 but, as was the case last year, Dr. Cullen did not appear or send a representative to explain or justify the increase. The only courthouse office to request more than a 2 percent pay raise was Information and Technology. IT Director Dale Quakenbush requested a salary increase from $53,039 to $57,100 — more than 7 percent. County Commissioner Tony Wichman addressed the council during Quakenbush’s presentation and said when Quakenbush hired on he was told, “we would try to bring him up to what he was making before coming to work for the county.” Quakenbush was employed in a similar position at Crane Federal Credit Union. Following the hearing, the council as a whole said they were not surprised by any of the requests they reviewed and expressed their appreciation to the various department heads and taxing units for showing restraint in their proposed budgets. In the still evolving, somewhat mysterious, post tax-reform world of “Circuit Breaker Caps,” “GQ” is not the name of a well known men’s magazine. Rather it means “Growth Quotient,” a phrase heard frequently during Thursday’s hearing. The growth quotient is a percentage figure determined annually by the state Department of Local Government Finance based on the annual growth in non farm income over the past six years up to a maximum of 6 percent. DLGF has determined the GQ for the state of Indiana in 2010 to be 2.9 percent, and for Daviess County 4.7 percent. The higher the figure the better. Under new guidelines following the passage of property tax caps in 2008, the fiscal body (county council) is required to review proposed budgets of taxing units (other than schools), compare the budget and the levy to the county growth quotient and make non binding recommendations to the unit. In most instances Thursday morning, the budgets submitted by the taxing units were less than the county GQ and the council approved each such budget as presented. In some instances, however, the towns of Montgomery, Cannelburg, Elnora and Plainville, for example, the proposed budgets contained increases in excess of the 4.7 percent GQ. In each such case, the Council recommended cuts which would cap the proposed increase at the county GQ. The recommendation of the council is by law non-binding, however, in each instance the units agreed to the cuts and modified their budgets accordingly. Departmental budgets will be reviewed by the council and either adopted or modified at the council’s September meetings.
