NEWTON COUNTY — A fiscal year 2027 general fund budget of $113.8 million was presented to the Newton County Board of Commissioners Tuesday night. The budget is based on estimated growth in the tax digest of 4%.
Finance Director Brittany White told commissioners the proposed general fund budget is $4 million more than last year, largely due to the full funding of operations for several Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax projects that opened in the last year and a $2.9 million increase in employee health insurance premiums that the county is absorbing. There are no new positions in the budget; employee step increases will be delayed until January when the county will reassess its revenue position.
White said tax revenues are expected to be $95.5 million, an increase of $6.5 million over fiscal year 2026. Other revenue is derived from charges for services, intergovernmental revenues, investment income, licenses and permits, fines and forfeitures, and miscellaneous. As currently proposed, the budget does not derive any revenues from the county’s fund balance.
White said the budget is based on an anticipated millage rate of 8.567, the same as fiscal year 2026.
A public hearing on the budget will be held June 9, 6 p.m. at the Historic Courthouse. Budget adoption is expected to take place at the BOC meeting set for June 16 at 7 p.m.
Prior to Tuesday night’s budget presentation, commissioners had worked to trim some departmental budget requests. The most significant cuts were made to the Sheriff’s Office and Jail Operations budgets. In the budget requests submitted in March, Sheriff Ezell Brown had asked for a total budget of $27.8 million for the Sheriff’s Office, an increase of $8.5 million over last year, and $26.8 million for Jail Operations, an increase of $11 million over last year. In the proposal presented Tuesday, the Sheriff’s Office budget total was reduced to $19.8 million and the Jail Operations budget to $16 million.
Key items removed from the Sheriff’s Office and Jail Operations budgets were overtime amounts of $2.4 million and $1.7 million, respectively. The overtime amounts currently budgeted are $350,000 for the Sheriff’s Office and $250,000 for Jail Operations — the same amounts as were budgeted last year.
There were also cuts to the Sheriff’s Office request for vehicle repairs and maintenance, from $725,000 to $375,000. Eliminated from the budget were requests to purchase vehicles for a total of $2.2 million. Vehicles requested included three operations vehicles at $69,000 each; one tactical armored vehicle at $480,000, a jury van at $84,000, an F250 truck to pull large trailers at $84,000, four Chevrolet Tahoe patrol vehicles at $71,000 each, four Tahoes for administrators at $58,000 each, eight Dodge Durangos for patrol at $70,000 each, and four Dodge Durangos for K9 use at $76,000 each.
During discussion of the budget proposal, District 4 Commissioner J.C. Henderson said he was concerned that the Sheriff’s Office had not received its full funding request. He said he would support a 2-mill increase in the millage rate if the funds could go toward helping seniors and giving employees raises, even if the county had to issue bonds to do it. Henderson also said he was concerned about potential layoffs and suggested the county hire a consultant to help identify other sources of revenue.
“We have got to — whether we want to or not commissioners — look at other streams of income we can bring into the county,” he said.
District 5 Commissioner LeAnne Long, who was acting as vice chairman during the meeting, called Henderson’s comments “fearmongering” and said there are no plans for layoffs.
“There is nobody who will be damaged by this budget,” she said. “Government is full of so much fat and so much waste … so you can go through (the budget) and pick through it and find things that don’t make sense. You can take those out of the budget. You can take millions and millions of unchecked overtime out. We’re not going to budget $4 million in overtime. That is insane. No corporation in the world will budget for $4 million of overtime.”
Long said public safety positions that were budgeted last year but were unfilled are still budgeted.
“That money is still in there; nobody took it out,” she said.
