Wednesday, August 31, 2011

What Type of Math is Joe Deters Using?

The County Department heads, including County Prosecutor Joe Deters, issued a report of what they state will happen if cuts are made to the county budget.  The results are not good, but Joe Deters seems to be using some type of new math or really has a internally top heavy salary range and high overhead.  I say this because he claimed that if he had to bear $1.9M of cuts of his $10.4M budget, he will have to cut 50 of his criminal attorneys. The Enquirer reports that 50 is 41% of his staff attorneys.  That works out to an 18% budget cut, which Deters claims equates to a 41% cut to his number of attorneys?  What the hell kind of cut is he making to his staff?  Is he just picking the 50 lowest paid attorneys and staff and laying them off? The average cost comes out to $38,000 for 50.  That's expense for the employees, not salary.  Salary would have be something much, less.  I don't know what the starting wage is for a county lawyer, but something in the low 30K seems really low.

I am guessing that 50 would include attorneys and support staff combined and it doesn't include expenses for benefits.

Therefore, either Deters is lying, or the Enquirer is mistaken, or both.

This is disappointing because the County is in horrible shape and the Republican majority is not willing to do anything to prevent these types of cuts. Reports like these issued by the department heads are helpful to the public understand the type of impact we face because of the failure of Hartmann and Monzel to maintain the services required by the state.  It would help department heads' cause if Deters would be more straight forward with the facts.

UPDATE: Yeah, someone is not adding correctly.  If you read page 41 of the impact statement you find that the very half-assed report from the Prosecutor's office assumes $3M in cuts and base 50 attorneys at $50K, plus 10K for benefits, totaling $60K each.  So, the question is where does the $3M vs. $1.9M of cuts discrepancy come from?  A million+ dollar difference is a big one.

1 comment:

  1. Don't worry, Monzel keeps finding ways to save through better efficiency.

    ReplyDelete

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