DEAR EDITOR:

As a Trumbull County commissioner, I was the lone advocate for fiscal responsibility, budgetary discipline and strategic financial oversight. I consistently warned against unchecked spending, the rubber-stamping of funding requests and the failure to require financial forecasting to analyze impacts. Among my many recommendations, I urged the board to implement zero-based budgeting with quarterly evaluations and variance analysis, and to begin formulating the budget in the summer.

Unlike traditional budgeting, which arbitrarily increases past expenditures, zero-based budgeting forces departments to justify every dollar spent. It eliminates redundancies, identifies spending alternatives and ensures resources are allocated efficiently. This approach demands great effort and analytical skills — something the commissioners and auditor fail to demonstrate. The Board of Commissioners fails to grasp that THEY are the county’s budget directors. It is laughable to watch Rick Hernandez belatedly demand budget accountability, and Denny Malloy lament the consequences of his own shortsighted decisions.

In December, I cautioned against adopting a temporary budget based on last year’s overspending. The consequences are now unavoidable. Malloy, Frank Fuda and Mauro Cantalamessa ignored every warning, and today, the board flounders amid the very crisis they created. The same level of thinking that caused this disaster cannot be trusted to resolve it.

Malloy repeatedly insisted that appeasing department heads — approving every request without scrutiny, exceeding budgets, paying massive late-approved change orders, ignoring preventative maintenance, allowing remote work, and perks for favored employees — was no big deal.

The budget is now an unmanageable quagmire, a direct result of years of reckless spending, unsustainable commitments, and fiscal negligence. Martha Yoder’s property tax increases barely begin to cover the shortfall, and yet, the spending spree continues: proposals for a new dog pound, a new 911 center, a new coroner’s office, and other exorbitant expenditures persist, while new positions are created instead of consolidating existing roles.

Meanwhile, sick leave and vacation conversions, rubber-stamped without transparency, are placed on the agenda without the disclosure of the actual number of hours involved — because the figures are indefensibly high. Let the public see the amounts and true annual cost of these unchecked benefits.

Also egregious is the unchecked salary inflation for management. Every year, these officials award themselves the same increases granted to union employees, a practice that compounds the financial strain. This isn’t just mismanagement — it is a deliberate, systemic failure of fiscal governance.

Trumbull County is on the precipice of financial collapse, driven by reckless commissioners and an acquiescent auditor who refuse to exercise even the most basic financial restraint.

Fiscal mismanagement is not an accident — it is a choice. The time for blind trust is over. It is time for accountability, reform and leadership that prioritizes long-term financial health over political expediency. I was the lone dissenting vote, the only voice of caution, and the one who proposed solutions — only to be ignored. While I miss serving as your fiscally responsible commissioner, I do not miss working alongside the incompetent.

NIKI FRENCHKO

Warren