Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Luzerne County wants to borrow more money

The last time the county asked for one of these types loans Judge Conahan said sure, no problem. This time Judge Ann Lokuta is putting county managers through the ringer.


According to the TL: To allow unfunded debt loans, a judge must determine that tax revenue came up short and overspending and shortfalls could not be foreseen, according to the Local Government Unit Debt Act.

Overspending and shortfalls could not be foreseen?


I've been pointing out that the Luzerne County budget that is proposed every year has had fictitious revenue projections as long as I have been blogging. Last year the budget called for $4 million from land sales that never happened and this year the figure is $6.3 million which didn't happen. Last year the county was supposed to get $3 million from beefed-up tax collections and they inflated that to $14 million from collection of unpaid property taxes for 2008. How is that going?


This is resembling the Wall Street bailout with a Groundhog Day movie twist to it. To use a cliche, the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results.

4 comments:

Michelle HD said...

They won't be able to get a loan in this economy!!!

Gort said...

Good point Michelle. The credit crises is squeezing local governments.

D.B. Echo said...

Somewhere, Tim Grier is pointing and laughing.

And people are surprised by this revelation?

Anonymous said...

Yes, Tim had a good case. They made a BS attack on his standing.

Taxpayers need to fight this.

And if the court approves, the repayment term CANNOT exceed ten years.

Joe Hilliard
FreedomWorks PA