By Krista Tincher
Of the Tobacco Valley News

It’s budget time again.
And according to North Lincoln County Commissioner Marianne Roose, not much should change in the upcoming county budget for 2010-2011.
Commissioners asked county departments to keep their budgets the same this year, said Roose, unless departments had an extenuating need. “Everyone did a really good job,” she said.
County Clerk and Recorder Tammy Lauer said that all county departments had turned in their budgets, but she had not yet compiled them into a preliminary budget for commissioner approval. Lauer projected that she would have a preliminary budget ready by the end of the month for commissioner approval in early September.
Meanwhile, the expiration of Secure Rural Schools funding looms in the near future.
If that funding is not renewed, said Roose, commissioners will be looking at eliminating $3 million to $5 million from the county budget.
That possibility considered, she said, the county is being as frugal as possible.
But Roose remains optimistic.
Roose traveled in June to Washington, D.C., to lobby for the funding renewal. “We’ve been on the Hill working very hard on it,” she said.
Commissioners will ask that the Secure Rural Schools funding be included in President Obama’s 2012 budget. “We’re asking for it to be put in for 10 years at the 2008 funding level,” she said.
And the Montana connections are there, she said, that could allow that to happen.
The White House deputy chief of staff is Jim Messina, who was once Montana Sen. Max Baucus’s chief of staff and is an alumnus of the University of Montana. “Nothing goes to President Obama that doesn’t go across Jim Messina’s desk,” said Roose.
Not to mention, she said, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer is the president of the Western Governor’s Association, which Obama works closely with. And Baucus is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
“We have worked really hard on this,” said Roose. “I do believe it will be funded at some level.”
Meanwhile, she added, the value for the 2010-2011 mill increased $611 over the previous year, rising to $31,292. That’s a big jump from the 2000-2001 level of $24,520, which was the lowest mill value Roose has seen since her time as commissioner began in 1997.

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