By Joyce Kryszak
Buffalo, NY – Almost daily now, Erie County officials are facing new challenges to the 2007 budget and the four-year plan.
The Board of Elections delivered the latest potential hit to the 2007 budget at Wednesday's budget hearings in County Hall.
County Elections commissioners recently returned from a conference in Albany where guidelines and mandates for the Help America Voting Act were spelled out.
The final word is money.
That's according to Erie County Elections Commissioners Dennis Ward and Ralph Mohr. Ward said these are not optional expenses.
"We're dealing here a lot with a federal court that's issuing... the (United States) Department of Justice is in the court and they are coming up with guidelines for New York state, because New York state never complied," said Ward. "That's why New York got sued, so things are getting spit out rather quickly, and unfortunately it all rolls down hill. And here we are at the bottom of the hill."
About 1500 new voting machines will have to be purchased for next year. According to the commissioners, that will cost the county at least a half million dollars above the federal reimbursement.
Then there is the need they say for additional inspectors and elections workers to survey polling places and maintain machines.
The Board of Elections has requested an additional $806,000 to meet personnel expenses through this year alone. But James Hartman, who soon takes over as county budget director, saidd that's unacceptable.
"The thing that concerns us is that after all these months, and after all these discussions, is that there is no documentation of what exactly those 82 people would be doing, why are they required," said Hartman. "There simply has been no case made for those number of employees."
Commissioners Ward and Mohr said there is ample justification in HAVA. For starters, the county must asssume, and initially pay for, the polling place duties previously taken care of by the individual municipalities.
But the heated exchange that followed between the ccommissioners, Hartman and some lawmakers was symptomatic of the ongoing political struggles - and concerns over the county's fragile four-year plan.
Around the corner from county hall, the county's fiscal stability authority met trying to hold it all together. But Control Board members said they are afraid the four-year plan is falling apart.