YOUNGSTOWN - Department heads are making requests for next year's budget that’s allocated by the Mahoning County Commissioners. 

The Mahoning County Clerk of the Courts office is requesting a 4.47% increase bringing them to $5,061,945.

Clerk Michael Ciccone called the higher budget “standard” for contractual wage increases despite firing one of his highest paid employees this year, Jennifer Ciccone.

The commissioners didn’t question the budget request but some did question the Ciccone's previous decision of such a high raise for Jennifer after the last budget allocation.

“We all work for the taxpayers. We’re all supposed to be public servants to the taxpayers and when they see such an egregious number as were being put out it's bad for everyone,” Commissioner Geno DiFabio said. 

Ciccone claimed in the meeting all offices are doing well and blamed any operating issues the commissioner brought up on restructuring during his first year in the position.

“If anyone thinks that what I inherited was a fantastic, wonderful operation that's not the case,” Ciccone said in the meeting but declined to comment on-camera afterwards. 

The Mahoning County Sheriff's Department also made a higher request than last year, up 7.97% bringing them to nearly $34 million dollars. 

The sheriff said they’ve seen an increase in healthcare costs for inmates and are trying to keep wages for deputies competitive. On top of what the commissioners end up allocating, the department is also expecting to generate $5 million dollars from getting paid to house ICE inmates.

“It's just enabled us to pay for things that the agency needs and to provide the right amount of manpower at the right amount of pay for our officers to be able to protect everyone in Mahoning County,” Sheriff Jerry Greene said. 

The department reported generating $2.6 million from April to October housing the inmates. Greene doesn’t know when they will stop the contract but expects it and the revenue stream to continue for several years. 

Across the county the majority of departments had higher requests ranging mostly from 2% to 10%. 

The largest request increase by line items were listed as Human Resources for 23.14%, Prosecutor Contracts for 21.90%, Juvenile Court for 12.50%, Judicial General for 12.38% and Treasurer for 10.54%

“There's soft cost and there's hard costs and we have answered and asked those questions within their budgets and it doesn't look like anyone is playing a shell game,” Commissioner Anthony Traficanti said. "Nobody's really out of line that we've seen so far but Mahoning County has been conservative with our spending over the years and I feel very positive we'll be able to give everyone their budget for this year." 

The commissioners will take a few weeks to crunch the numbers and expect to announce how much each department will get for 2026 in December.