Maricopa County budget to include tax reduction

Maricopa County supervisors are cutting the property tax rate for a fourth straight year while trimming the overall county budget by 11%. The budget also includes funding for a variety of capital projects, including a new downtown facility to replace the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center.

Public safety spending takes up 47% of the new Maricopa County budget. That includes the sheriff’s office and jails, the county attorney’s office and the county court system.

The county is also seeing financial benefits after two consecutive years of paying down unfunded pension liabilities for retiring government employees in the law enforcement sector.

Thomas Galvin, Vice Chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, joined “Arizona Horizon” to provide more information on the budget.

The last budget cut was approximately $500 million dollars, which was a surprise because governments and budgets continually increase. Fiscal policies are a key factor of why the budget was cut by nearly 11%.  

“…In fact the budget last year was $4.3 billion dollars. What we’ve done is we cut 11% this year, we cut 3% last year and when I go around the county talking to people about how government people can not believe it because you never hear it happening…but because of our really good fiscal responsible policies four straight years of property tax cuts and making sure that we’re doing the right way on spending, that’s how we have a budget that’s cut by 11%,” said Galvin. 

Efficiency and savings were the two main factors of the budget cut along with lowering pension obligations.  

“What we have found are savings and efficiency overall. We have 50 different lines of business at Maricopa County…we are also reducing the pension obligations that we have for our corrections officers, prosecutors and our sworn deputies and we’re at 100% fully funded for our pension debt,” said Galvin.