Republican Board of Commissioners Blame Trump for Upcoming Property Tax Increase - Part 2

Republican Board of Commissioners Blame Trump – Part 2

It would seem that some need even more proof that it is our Board of Commissioners’ governing decisions that is leading them to dramatically increase our property taxes.

So, in continuance of the examples provided in my previous post regarding the impending property tax increase, let’s look deeper into why the increase is really being imposed.

Let's begin with their statement that additional funds (raised taxes) will be required to carry out a newly mandated second annual review of all recipients of Medicaid and SNAP benefits to verify their continued eligibility for those benefits. The Commissioners state that to carry out this new mandated second review, the Department of Social Services will require an additional 8 new employees.

As a senior manager with a government department, I was required to conduct the exact same kind of reviews to determine the continued eligibility of those my department served. To justify my request for additional staff to conduct those ongoing reviews, I was required to complete a “time-and-motion” study of randomly selected employees who were actually performing those functions. This required observing and documenting every action taken and the time it took the employee to complete each action to conduct such a review. This study was conducted over five consecutive days for the entire eight-hour period each day.

So, will it really take 8 new employees to carry out this new mandate? Let’s look at the facts:

According to county records, approximately 12,000 residents of Haywood County receive Medicaid benefits, and 8,000 residents receive SNAP benefits. So, approximately 20,000 residents will need to have their eligibility verified for a second time annually, purportedly requiring 8 new employees.  

First of all, the Department of Social Services is already doing the exact review annually, which means that all the organizational processes needed to complete the review are already in place, i.e., individuals to be reviewed are known and in their database, allowing for an already existing computer program to generate mailing envelopes with the recipient’s name and address when the recipient’s review date arrives.

Electronically identifying and generating an envelope with a name and address, manually stuffing a form into it, sealing the envelope, and then delivering it to the mail room will take an average of 4 minutes per recipient. So, we have an average of 4 minutes of employee time per recipient for this part of the process. Generous time allocation given that most of the work is carried out electronically.

Next, we process returned forms: opening the envelope, retrieving the recipient’s name from the database, comparing the information in the recipient’s file with the information on the form, and updating the file as needed. This should take an average of 6 minutes per recipient, plus an additional 1 minute per recipient for processing glitches. Common sense tells you that only a very small number of those 20,000 will run into any sort of glitch, so this is a very generous amount of time allocated for glitches.

The total average time to fully process each recipient’s annual eligibility review should be about 11 minutes. Processing 20,000 recipients at an average of 11 minutes per recipient will require about 3,000 man-hours annually.

Although previous reviews, if conducted competently, should yield very few ineligible recipients, for our purposes we will assume that 10 percent of reviewed recipients, approximately 2,000, are found ineligible, requiring verification of ineligibility and a subsequent notification to the recipient that they are being dropped from the program. This will require an average processing time of approximately 15 minutes per case, totaling approximately 500 hours of employee time annually.

The total annual employee hours required to fully process the second verification will be approximately 3,500 hours, which is equivalent to two full-time employees.  Each new employee will actually work 1,920 hours annually; 1,200 hours were deducted to cover sick and vacation leave.

8 new employees working 40 hours per week equals approximately 15,360 man-hours per year, minus 1,200 hours for leave, equals 14,160 available man-hours at an average annual salary of $53,000.

The county Board of Commissioners is asking us, the taxpayers, to fund approximately 15,360 hours of salary annually, totaling approximately $424,000 (benefit values are not included), to accomplish 3,500 hours of eligibility verification processing, which would cost approximately $106,000 annually (benefit values are not included).

Are we being gaslit by our Board of Commissioners, who see an opportunity to justify expanding the county government and increasing our property taxes via the new mandate for a second review of recipients’ continued eligibility for those benefits, but will actually be redirect to other initiatives not directly involved with the new mandate or would not be acceptable for funding by the taxpayer if known?

And while we are addressing inappropriate expenditures, let’s not forget the $75,000 we have been transferring annually since 2018 to the Buncombe-Ashville Chamber of Commerce to recruit and refer new businesses to Haywood County. Haywood County’s cost for this service over the past seven years has been $525,000. Haywood County’s net return on that investment currently stands at zero!  

So the question we must all ask ourselves is: Are our current “Republican” Commissioners adequately managing and appropriating taxpayer funds in accordance with the Republican Party platform, i.e., limited government and limited expenditures, or are we being taken to the cleaners to benefit Chairman Kevin Ensley’s personal agenda and maintaining of power within the county government?

Food for thought!

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