Most Butler County property owners would have been happier if the county commissioners' budget advisory committee had recommended reducing or eliminating the 2.5-mill tax increase approved by the outgoing board of commissioners in December.

While that was not the recommendation to new Commissioners Dale Pinkerton and James Lokhaiser and veteran Commissioner James Kennedy, taxpayers can nevertheless be optimistic over the recommendations that the committee did make. Those suggestions could help rein in county spending in future years, improve government efficiency and help to avoid large property tax hikes.

The recommendations also could result in a more transparent budget process, providing county residents a better understanding of the pressures and challenges inherent in county government of this size.

Not everyone is going to be happy about what the committee has put forth, if the recommendations are implemented. That includes county row officers, county employees and the county residents whose real-estate tax bills are the basis for the county's general fund.

But the county government has operated for too long on a business-as-usual, it's-always-been-done-this-way management style, and Pinkerton and Lokhaiser merit praise for laying a foundation for improved fiscal decisions in the future.

At a commissioners meeting Wednesday, the advisory committee, by way of its report, introduced what should be regarded as a blueprint for improved fiscal responsibility on behalf of county residents. While it will take much of 2008 for Pinkerton and Lokhaiser to fully weigh all aspects of what is being proposed, as the new commissioners monitor the progress of the budget approved by their predecessors, taxpayers should expect budget preparation for 2009 to reflect better decision making and fiscal responsibility.

The fact that this year the board of commissioners will be renegotiating collective bargaining agreements covering most county employees provides the opportunity for the county to achieve relatively quickly a number of the short-term recommendations from the advisory committee, including the sharing of health care costs and savings in overtime pay and employee scheduling.

Additionally, the committee recommends a 1 percent reduction in non-personnel operating expenses in the general fund and the Sunnyview Home budget and elimination of the wasteful policy of providing standard employee benefits to appointed, part-time solicitors on retainer for county row offices. That in itself should save county taxpayers more than $100,000 a year.

But it is the advisory committee's long-term recommendations that could mean even greater benefits. Those recommendations include initiation of a strategic planning effort to review the county government's management structure, bringing in the Governor's Center for Local Government Service to help with the strategic planning effort, increasing the property tax assessment rate to provide greater flexibility in taxation, and evaluating whether the county should remain in the nursing home business.

This year's 2.5-mill tax increase has placed the county at the maximum levy for general fund purposes under the Fourth Class County Code.It will provide an estimated $3 million of additional revenue.

Certainly taxpayers would have preferred a recommendation to roll back or eliminate that increase but, as the committee pointed out, that could have created cash-flow challenges for the county as well as individual municipalities that bill on the same tax card, if approval of such a reduction came after Jan. 31.

As much as a tax reduction would have been preferred, a hasty decision might not have been in the taxpayers' best interests, without the commissioners having the opportunity to make a thorough evaluation of such a plan.

Indeed, the advisory group did not have as much time as it would have preferred to make a full and thorough evaluation of the 2008 budget, which the commissioners reopened earlier this month. Thus, it was best that the advisory group opted for the prudent course of allowing the tax increase to remain, rather than favoring what could have turned out to be an error.

For this year, taxpayers should be content with what has been accomplished in just this one month by the new board. It is to be hoped that the new board, using the recommendations made by the advisory committee, as well as ideas of its own, will have significant fiscal progress to report at this time next year.