Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger speaks during the County Commission meeting after releasing his 2011-12 fiscal budget that included laying off 37 people.The budget cuts proposed by County Mayor Jim Coppinger for the range of county-subsidized civic agencies and the county’s Health Department are terribly short-sighted and needlessly counter-productive and self-destructive.
The value of the work performed by the public service agencies and organizations is crucial to the health and welfare of citizens across the county. Agencies that provide cultural and educational programming are no less important. They provide many of the amenities that are essential to attracting economic growth – just ask Volkswagen officials – and much of their programming is specifically targeted to serve the county’s most under-served and vulnerable youth.
For the public-service agencies, the ultimate social cost of failing to help support these agencies will be higher in terms of both the human toll and the actual dollar costs of defunding the agencies’ work. The higher social costs will simply outweigh the perceived savings to countywide taxpayers.
When the county cuts mental health services, for example, more of the mentally ill haphazardly end up in jail, where their public costs soon exceed the costs of treatment. That has been the documented trend since the state began cutting back both in-patient and out-patient care.
Coppinger’s hit on the county health department is especially brutal and tragically short-sighted. The county provides a little less than half of the health department’s $21 million budget; the larger share comes from state and federal matching grants allotted on the basis of specific health focus areas.