Fairfax County supervisors called on County Executive Anthony Griffin to bar all but essential new hires, limit travel and contracting expenses, and forestall replacing vehicles in the county fleet, all measures aimed at helping close a looming $430 million budget shortfall.
The shortfall, which spans the sprawling county government and school system, is caused predominantly by the tanking housing market and threatens to plunge Fairfax County into a period of greater austerity. Monday’s actions signaled that supervisors are looking to trim some of the most obvious spending items before a deeper scouring of county expenditures.
The board “provided guidance” to the county executive on cutting costs, said Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerry Connolly, who indicated that Griffin is already focused on that task.
“It’s not like he needs to get religion [on cutting spending], he’s got it,” Connolly said.
Griffin is scheduled to report back to the board on Sept. 22 on how the measures could be put in place.
Supervisors were careful to differentiate the hiring restrictions from a blanket “freeze,” which Griffin criticized as ineffective. Connolly said the board simply “asked that restraint be shown and only essential positions are filled.”
The cuts by the Fairfax County board closely mirror the measures taken by the Kaine administration, which laid out a similar set of restrictions in July and also suggested layoffs could be on the way. The commonwealth, which is seeing a slowdown in payrolls and sales tax receipts as part of the sluggish economy, faces what some legislators say could be a $1 billion gap through fiscal 2010.
Fairfax County has scheduled 20 community input sessions this fall as supervisors prepare to craft the fiscal 2010 budget, and has ordered an agency-by-agency “lines of business” review to identify areas of wasteful spending.
