Editorial: DuPage County and reminders budgeting should be give-and-take

It's budget season, both for the private and public sector. It's also silly season for some.

Imagine if you will this scenario: Your boss tells you to prepare next year's budget with some caveats - mainly some expense reductions that should be relatively easy to achieve.

You a) do as asked, but make sure the budget is a workable document; or b) submit a budget for more than last year along with a strongly worded letter explaining why you won't follow this year's guidelines. And, for further measure, you decline to participate in the give-and-take budgeting process.

If you chose a, that would be the reasonable solution and one that hopefully would result in a budget that your department and the company as a whole can live with. If you chose b, then say hello to DuPage County Sheriff John Zaruba as that was his choice in dealing with the DuPage County Board as they work to approve next year's budget.

The proposed spending plan the county has outlined "will not only reduce my ability to perform my statutory duties, it will dilute my ability to perform any critical supportive public safety function," Zaruba wrote in September, the last time the county heard from him on this topic.

"If he doesn't like our budget, come in here like a responsible adult and let's talk about it," DuPage County Chairman Dan Cronin said this week. "Maybe there are trade-offs and things we can do."

Indeed, trade-offs are always part of the budget process. So is looking for efficiencies and ways to do things differently that may save some money and time. Those ideas oftentimes come from a collaborative budget process. Zaruba, a longtime sheriff in DuPage County, should know that and work toward compromise rather than a hard line in the sand.

That kind of negotiating doesn't get very far, as Gov. Bruce Rauner and the Democratic leadership in the General Assembly can attest. As we said in Wednesday's editorial, an open deliberation between those leaders would be a good way to jump start an end to the state budget stalemate.

At the federal level, that stalemate looks to be ending mainly because House Speaker John Boehner is resigning and has nothing more to lose to get a deal done.

The county, federal and state politicians would do well to take some lessons from their municipal counterparts on how to get a budget passed and how to do it in a public manner.

For example, Naperville City Council members held a budget workshop this week to question city department heads on their budgetary choices. They asked questions and raised concerns and will do it again at future budget hearings. That's how a spending plan should get completed, a back-and-forth with everyone involved having a say and understanding why certain decisions are made.