SOUTH BEND — You’ve got to have flags, purchasing manger Lou Ann Hill told the county commissioners Thursday during a budget committee meeting.

She was responding to a suggestion from county Commissioner Robert Kovach that a $6,000 line item for “Memorial Day expenses’’ could be cut from the 2009 budget.

Hill said a law mandates that the county buy flags every year to decorate the graves of veterans.

The item helped illustrate the problem the county commissioners are having as they try to cut their budget. Every department in the county was told to cut its budget by 8 percent for 2009. The commissioners haven’t cut anything yet.

Kovach said they’re working on it. They likely will come down to cutting personnel, he said.

The problem with the commissioners’ budget is that it serves as a catch-all for countywide expenses and for things that don’t fit in other accounts. They are stuck with some of those things.

Among the biggest costs for them are $9 million for group health insurance; $2.4 million for FICA contributions; and $1.1 million for the retirement fund account.

Cindy Bodle, chief deputy county auditor, in a good news/bad news kind of comment, said those costs likely will go down next year if the county eliminates a lot of jobs, as it has talked of doing.

The County Council’s budget also was up for review. The submitted budget actually goes up by about 30 percent, from $163,551 this year to $212,551 in 2009.

Council President Rafael Morton attributed the rise to a proposal to hire a budget administrator next year, at a salary of $49,000.

The committee decided to leave that amount in the budget, but to change it to “contractual services.’’

House Enrolled Act 1001, which is causing the budget grief by placing limits on property taxes, includes a provision for the County Council to examine the budgets of all governmental units in the county, including cities, towns, townships, schools and libraries.

Instead of hiring someone to do that, Commissioner Mark Dobson suggested, perhaps the county could contract with a local accounting or consultant firm to do the work. That way, he said, it wouldn’t have to pay the auxiliary expenses that extend beyond an employee’s salary.