Tax and spend democrats on Commission struggle with over-spending

COAST has enjoyed watching our two liberal, tax-and-spend County Commissioners, Todd Portune and David Pepper, grapple with spending cuts at the County, cuts they have steadfastly refused to make for the past year and a half. Of course, during this same time they first imposed without a vote, and then fought in favor of, their Super-Sized ½ cent sales tax increase. All along, they insisted County government was as efficient as it could be, but concurrently refused common sense reforms.

Finally, last week the Commission adopted the first of many such reforms proposed by Commissioner DeWine – pursuing managed competition for the maintenance of the County’s fleet of 905 vehicles. Read the Enquirer article here.

However, this Commission, which has declared that safety is its first priority, continues to resist common sense reforms and continuously wastes money on non-priority items.

For example, Portune and Pepper have re-enacted the wasteful Home Improvement Program that historically has cost County tens of thousands of dollars in investment income. They have resisted efforts to re-allocate more than $3 million wasted on promoting conventions in Cincinnati and have refused to analyze $2 million in drug forfeiture assets annually.

Liberal democrat Todd Portune himself has admitted that the tight budget has finally convinced county officials to consider reforms they “would not have considered” otherwise. Thank goodness for the budget “crisis.”

“It’s the spending,” said COAST Chairman Jason Gloyd. “The reason that County spending is exceeding its revenues is simply that it continues to spend entirely too much.”