I keep reading county Repubs' comments trying to drum up some sort of case that the Matthews-Hoeffel record is marked by high taxes and out of control spending.
Here's one that comes from somebody calling themselves "H2O" (geez, H20 comes from what? a watercooler, maybe?) over on Philly.com:
"...Castor voted against all the big spending budgets."
But in truth, there haven't been any "big spending budgets." Fact is, quite the opposite is true - county budgets since the Matthews-Hoeffel coalition took control have CUT spending and kept tax rates stable, even in the face of drastic cuts in state and federal grant money and rapidly falling real estate tax revenue.
Here is a rundown of the county budget over the past five years: the final two Ellis-Matthews budgets and the first three Matthews-Hoeffel budgets:
2007: Expenditures - $463.0 million; Tax rate - 2.84 mills
2008: Expenditures - $484.4 million; Tax rate - 2.695 mills
2009 (first Matthews/Hoeffel budget): Expenditures - $424.6 million; Tax rate - 2.65 mills
2010: Expenditures - $403.9 million; Tax rate - 2.695 mills
2011: Expenditures - $398.5 million; Tax rate - 2.695 mills
Meanwhile, annual grant income during this period fell from a high of more than $200 million in the final year of Matthews-Ellis to less than $140 million last year.
If Castor wants to try and score points for voting against budgets that lowered spending by more than $86 million dollars while keeping the tax rate stable, he's welcome to try.
But if I was Bruce Castor (ugh, what a thought!), I think I'd stay away from making any kind of fiscal argument for why people should vote for me.
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2 comments:
You may wish to review your facts.
The county did not cut spending by $80 million. They simply stopped counting the Federal pass through money for social programs run by the health, geriatric and public safety departments in the budget number.
year to year discretionary spending has gone up each of the five years you mention and borrowing massive amounts of money (over $100 million) in 3 years to hide your massive increases in spending (they don't count in the "budget numbers" you mention) means Castor is absolutely right and Hoeffel, Matthews and you are dead wrong.
The AAA bond rating has been placed on "warning" status because of the abysmal fiscal record of Matthews/Hoeffel.
What you say could very likely be true - the figures here come from the official budgets posted on the county website, and are accurate year-to-year, but contain very little in the way of explanation.
But even assuming that federal grant money that was included in the Matthews-Ellis budgets has been pulled form the Matthews-Hoeffel budgets, it would be pulled from both the expenditures side AND the grants (revenue) side. There would still be a net reduction in spending in each of the past three budgets.
If you have source material or documentation that gives more details, I'd love to see it and I'll adjust what's posted if it's wrong.
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