At long last, it’s budget time in Chenango County. Hold your excitement.

In the face of financial instability in many parts of the state, municipalities are crunching the numbers to make it through yet another fiscal year, much to the overwhelming enthusiasm of residential taxpayers hardly able to contain their ecstasy. However, budget trends in local government across the county and statewide indicate an imminent threat to the very being of local government; that is, municipalities are threatened by increasing pension and healthcare costs of municipal employees.

State mandates and rising costs have led many New York municipalities to suck their reserves dry, forcing many to refer to banks and other private institutions to borrow money to pay off these requisite dues. In short, many are spending more than they make. I commend the Chenango County board of supervisors for not falling to this resort, at least not yet.

The need for municipalities to borrow money is under scrutiny from taxpayers, which almost seems unwarranted given the spending habits of the average consumer. For me, it brings to mind issue of personal finance, which I think is a much larger issue at hand.

Fair to say deficit spending is a concern for taxpayers, but it’s time to put more emphasis on personal finance too, now that U.S. households combined are more than $11 trillion in debt. Upcoming generations don’t know how to balance a checkbook, let alone pay off debts. Say what you want about government spending, at least most elected officials know when their in the red, unlike the average American consumer.

Recent findings from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York show that the average American U.S. Household debt tops $672 billion in credit card dues. We owe $750 billion in auto loans, $914 billion in student loans, and in mortgages and home equity loans we owe an astounding $837 trillion (that’s right, trillion).