Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1882-01-17
lancaster fntelligcllrer
TUESDAY EVENING, JAN. II, 1882.
The County Debt.

lie OOuuty UcUls
The Neu Era thinks our county
finances are 'growing decidedly worse,'
and it saws "Through bad management
large floating debt has been incurred for
which the county is responsible, and the
result is that additional taxation must
be laid to meet it. The county commits
sioners have just fixed the rate for the
present year, and have increased it from
twenty-five to thirty cents on every hun
dred dollars Of valuation. 1t seems our
county commissioners can't run the
county on the basis of S21G,OOO, but
must have forty odd thousand dollars
more The last board of county COM
missloners was unpopular as a whole;
and in the closing days of their term the
performances of COble and BuShOng
were 50 tiagrant as to justify and con-
firm the suspicious which attached to
their integrity almost from their official
beginning. II is fair to them, however,
to say that the last board appear from
the books to have reduced the county
debt considerably, very much more
than the floating debt left by them,
which is not greater than that generally
carried over from year to year, or from
one board TO another. According to the
bond book in the commissioners Office
the bonded indebtedness of the county
Jan. !, 1879. was $40, O,7GG.99; Jan. |,
lSsO, it had increased to S.;Gs,97I.19,
owing To the large noating deb: left over
10y tie preceding board and funded in
1879: Jan. ]. 1881, ii was reduced to
$50. ..I5";l and the clerk of the retir
ing board reports the bonded debt Jan.
|, lss., Ill 500 900, with Il floating debt
Of 81 S1,lyO-tOtal, 500, $50. an apparent
reduction of over SG0.O0o during the past
year. This would be Il most excellent
showing. and would i'm itself reflect
credit Oh the last board, but, us the IN
TELLIGENCEH has shown in its issue of
Sept. 20, the system OF Ok-keeping in
the county commissioners Office has
been little cloudy, and until the end of
the fiscal year, April ], for the expenses
of which the tax levy is made,
and up to which time the interest
account runs, it is hard 10 accurately get
at the real county debt and compare it
with that Of former years. We are sat
isied, however, that the last board did
actually reduce the cOunty'S indebted
ness some SO. .OOl, while the board before
them had increased it that much. This
m h,r f,ir fp
thai olr finances grow decidedly worse,
and if the present board will stop the
many leaks which the last board let run
and even wideneh, our county finances
should steadily grow better and the next
three years should show Il large decrease
of the county debt without any increase
of the tax rate.
We have shown that the Republican
majority of the last board-elected 10y
the Nc,c E,u factiGn--were silimefully
pruhigate, and that some of the leaks
through which they poured the county
money were opened for the benefit of L
prothonoiary and register elected also by
the reform faction. If, despite all this,
ought to l,e reduced still further by an
economical and honest administration.
and the alleged floating debt of Ss,l5O
incurred in :, year when the bonded
debt was reduced SG77 ,5l5.34, is no justif-
cation of All increased tax levy. On the
contrary this reduction of the debt, in
the face of thousands of dollars waste
fully expended. shows that either the
tax rate could be Lowered or that the re-
duction of the debt ought to proceed
with even greater rapidly.