Two Portage County agencies are pushing back on their budget allocations for 2025

Anticipating they will have just over $68 million in resources for 2025, Portage County’s commissioners are deep into their annual task of determining which department gets how much money.

The county’s 2024 budget was $67.3 million; the year before that, the commissioners had just over $66 million to allocate.

At this point, says county Budget and Financial Management Director Jackie Petty, only two of the county’s 30 departments are requesting more than they had been offered:

• The Portage County Prosecutor’s Office requested $5.3 million but was offered $4.4 million.
  
• The Portage County Board of Elections requested almost $1.7 million but was offered $1.25 million.

The Portage County Sheriff’s Office had originally requested $4.1 million more than the budget department’s $22 million offer, but Petty said she met on Nov. 22 with the sheriff’s office finance manager, Ronald Rost, and worked out a solution. The pair arrived at a final figure of $22.41 million, which the commissioners will have to consider, she said.

County Administrator Michelle Crombie said the commissioners expect to approve the final budget by Dec. 12. Petty said she was due to meet with the commissioners on Dec. 4 to discuss the other departments’ requests, but had to postpone the meeting because the heat was broken in the administration building.

Representatives from the prosecutor’s office and board of elections made their cases to the commissioners during the county leaders’ regularly scheduled Nov. 21 meeting.

Prosecutor’s office

Incoming county Prosecutor Connie Lewandowski, who will succeed Victor Vigluicci following his retirement at the end of the year, told the commissioners that the department’s increased budget is to allow the hiring of four additional prosecutors, two for a newly designated special victims unit and two for homicides and major violent crimes.

The SVU would handle cases involving vulnerable populations, including child abuse, rape, elder abuse, theft from elderly, and animal cruelty, she said.

“Statistically speaking, our judges [have] the highest caseload in the state of Ohio. This has been the case for multiple years. Over the past four years, our caseload has doubled,” she said.

The surge is mostly attributable to special victims and violent crimes, including homicides.

Also, though Portage County prosecutors have “substantially higher case loads,” they are paid less than those in surrounding counties, Lewandowski said. She urged the commissioners to bring Portage County prosecutors’ salaries more into line with neighboring counties.

Pressing her case, Lewandowski said the prosecutor’s office has experienced high turnover in recent years. Hiring seasoned prosecutors would enable the department to “retain talent and also reduce burnout,” Lewandowski told the commissioners.

The current stable of prosecutors, while talented, does not have adequate experience in SVU, homicide and violent crimes cases.

Lewandowski said the prosecutor’s office provides legal advice to the county’s 16 police departments, and prosecutors can be called out to crime scenes at all hours of the day and night.

“Just like cops, we’re married to our jobs. Our duty to this community is endless,” she said. [Portage County’s victims] “deserve a system that is effectively equipped to fight for them.”

Board of Elections

Board of Elections Deputy Director Theresa Nielsen asked the commissioners for 7% pay increases for poll workers and voting location managers, who now earn $130 and $135 respectively each election day.

The raise would add $10 to their election day paycheck, she said. No taxes are taken out because they are considered independent contractors.

Poll workers must report for work at 5:45 a.m. and must remain at their posts until 7:30 p.m. or whenever the people already in line at that time have cast their votes. Then there is paperwork to be completed, which involves even more time.

Countywide, there are 129 precincts and 51 polling locations. The BOE must keep a stable of 519 poll workers, but needs to train 600-800 people who are willing to step in even at the last minute. With no idea who will actually appear, the BOE tries to have 200 poll workers on standby each election day.

An additional compensation request targeted BOE staff: Nielsen asked for a 6% salary increase, dismissing as “insufficient” the commissioners’ 1.25% proposal.

“I don’t think there is an understanding of the amount of work that our staff does. We do as much as we can to keep their spirits up, but if they look at the cost of living increases over the last four or five years, their compensation has not kept up with just that,” she said.

The salary discrepancies between Portage County and surrounding counties are significant enough that the BOE could very well start losing people, Nielsen said.

“They can go to Summit County and make more money than they’re making here,” she told the commissioners.

Nielsen also asked for $9,400 for bonus money to be spread across the BOE’s 12 staff members, which includes eight full-time and four additional staff members, one Republican for every Democrat to maintain fairness.

Employed full time are the two BOE directors and six clerks. The four additional employees, employed full time but on a temporary basis, check and verify information on petitions and handle absentee ballots. Familiar with BOE systems, their jobs cannot be farmed out to casual hirees, she said.

Regardless of their job title or status, BOE employees must be detail-oriented and know that they work in an environment that allows no room for mistakes. They must be unfailingly polite even when faced with aggressive members of the public, she said.

Another ask was a $6,000 annual increase in the BOE’s lease budget, which now stands at $5,000. Instead of relying on the county’s IT department to maintain its printers, the BOE has contracted with Visual Edge IT, a managed print company that will provide equipment, toner and service calls.

Nielsen’s most expensive ask was an increase from $70,000 to $110,000 for professional and technical services.

“The Ohio Secretary of State’s office, per directive, requires that we have an annual ‘pen test’ done: a penetration test to make sure that our systems are safe from the outside world,” she said. “We don’t have an option as to whether or not we do it.”

Even with the budget increase requests, Nielsen said the BOE is actually asking for 17% less than it received for this year. The Board of Elections runs on a four-year cycle, with “off-year” requests being less than those for presidential and gubernatorial election years.

She said the next such year will be in 2026, when Ohioans will elect a new governor.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misreported the amount of the Board of Elections’ budget request.