ELYRIA — Departments that put criminals behind bars are protected — for now — from additional cuts in the 2010 budget passed by county commissioners on Thursday.

Commissioners slashed nearly $1.1 million to non-mandated services including the county airport, transit and economic development entities and slashed an additional $400,000 by cutting various departments an additional 3 percent, Budget Director Lisa Hobart said.

The prosecutor’s office and sheriff’s department were spared when commissioners imposed additional 3 percent cuts to departments that work under the commissioners, the county auditor, the courts and the Lorain County Board of Elections.

A spike in crime, including four active murder investigations, has shown the need to restore a 40-hour work week at the prosecutor’s office, according to Commissioner Ted Kalo.

Sheriff Phil Stammitti and Lorain County Prosecutor Dennis Will said budgets will be tight, even if they don’t get any more cuts.

Stammitti said labor contracts through October 2010 calling for 2½ percent raises mean an additional $150,300 in labor costs at the jail and $85,000 additional costs for deputies.

The sheriff said he has contacted the unions in hopes those raises could be waived so that no more deputies or corrections officers lose their jobs.

Will said his staff, which is not represented by a union, took shorter work weeks, and 15 percent pay cuts, when the budget crisis hit earlier this year. A shorter work week means there is no time for all of the work to be done, especially when crime starts increasing during tough economic times, according to Will.

“We’ve had more homicides and more shootings,” Will said. “The cases are getting more serious, and many of them are requiring follow-ups and investigation and analysis — we’ve had a hard time keeping our head above water.”

One assistant prosecutor and one secretary, whom Will declined to name, will be laid off, he said, On the plus side, the county received $62,000 in federal stimulus money to pay salaries for prosecutors. While salaries will not return to 2008 levels, Will said he hopes employees will be “within a couple percent” of their former pay.

Meanwhile, Cordes said he is working on a plan to save as many fixed routes of Lorain County Transit as possible after commissioners cut general fund allocations from $500,000 to $100,000. The federal government allowed $293,000 in funding for a train station restoration project to be diverted to operations, but deep cuts are needed because state funding depends on the county’s funding, which will be only $100,000.

“I anticipate we’ll need a reduction of at least 50 percent on fixed routes,” Cordes said.

Some communities such as Oberlin are looking to possibly subsidize routes, and the county also is examining a plan to raise fares beyond the anticipated 10-cent hike from $2.05 to $2.15 to as much as $2.50 a ride, county officials said.

Overall, Hobart, the county’s budget director, said the general fund will drop from about $56 million to $47 million next year, but the net drop is only about $2 million because commissioners set aside $4.5 million in general fund money for the Lorain County Jail and $2.3 million in general fund money for the county prosecutor’s office.

A $4 million carryover from 2009 to 2010 will help the county avoid deeper cuts next year, Hobart said.

But Hobart said a comfortable carryover from 2010 to 2011 is not expected and the budget in 2011 could be even tighter. Commissioners will stop collecting the $14 million in revenue from the temporary 0.5 percent sales tax on March 31, 2010. In November, voters soundly defeated making the tax increase permanent.

Cordes warned that more cuts are on the horizon if sales taxes and other revenue continue to decline. The county will continue to collect 0.75 percent of sales tax — 0.5 percent to support the general fund and 0.25 percent to support the jail.

“If the numbers continue to decline, we’re going to have to go back with a sharp pencil,” Cordes said.

Hobart said the county was able to save $350,000 in general fund revenue when the office of Auditor Mark Stewart agreed to absorb most of the costs related to maintaining the Tax Map, the maps used by the auditor to prepare taxes.

The Tax Map department now operates in the office of County Engineer Kenneth Carney with all of its funding from the general fund. Next year, most of the employees in the Tax Map department will be paid from Real Estate Assessment funds collected by Stewart’s office, saving money in the general fund, said Chief Deputy Auditor Craig Snodgrass.

Under the law, one employee of that department will continue to work under Carney as required by law, Snodgrass said.

Even the smallest cuts are important, commissioners said, noting that the county expects to save $70,000 by laying off switchboard operators and using an automated answering system for the county’s main phone number.

But that announcement brought a union grievance. A switchboard operator declined to comment Thursday afternoon on the prospect of losing her job.

Most county employees are represented by the steelworker’s union, which has refused to grant concessions.

That union’s contract expires at the end of the year, Cordes said.

A special meeting of the commissioners was set for 9:30 a.m. Dec. 30 so commissioners can react to a fact-finding report that Cordes expects to receive on Dec. 29.

Contact Cindy Leise at 329-7245 or cleise@chroniclet.com.

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