The majority of Cambria County commissioners have planned a press conference at 1:15 p.m. today at the county courthouse to discuss its 2015 audit.

They’ve said the event is to give context to what they expect will be bad news about the county’s debt and a recent Standard & Poor’s downgrade from BBB stable to BBB negative.

But a former commissioner said people should not be tricked into thinking the previous administration is at fault.

Former President Commissioner Douglas Lengenfelder said current commissioners Thomas Chernisky and B.J. Smith have skewed the numbers to make the county seem worse off than it was under his watch, all while they act to put the county further in debt.

“The fact of the matter is, Mark (Wissinger) and I worked really hard to reduce the county deficit,” he said.

Lengenfelder, who lost a bid for re-election in November, spearheaded a debt financing in 2014 to frontload county debt payments at $6.4 million annually, tapering off to under $2 million after 2023.

The current commissioners board voted earlier this month to rework its debt again to level the payments, saying the county struggled under the previous plan because it did not generate enough debt tax to make those high payments, requiring annual borrowing from the general fund to make up the difference.

Wissinger said at the time that he debated whether to vote for the new plan, but said the former refinancing was a more “difficult” means to achieve the county’s financial goals.

In a statement released Friday, commissioners Chernisky and Smith said the previous board put the county in financial distress by overestimating revenue and under-budgeting expenses.

The statement said the new board “has made a decision to put partisan politics aside and work for the betterment of our county,” but is signed without Wissinger.

Wissinger did not return a call for comment Tuesday afternoon.

Lengenfelder said he also believes the county courts approved a 5-mill tax increase for 2016 before a public hearing was held in February, at which Lengenfelder testified to oppose it.

“(Controller) Ed Cernic went out and printed tax forms even before they had that hearing,” Lengenfelder said. “Which basically tells me, that sounds like it’s an inside job. That the decision was made even before the hearings” before President Judge Norman Krume-nacker III.

“They were willing to spend that amount of money to print up those tax forms” early, he said.

Cernic said Tuesday that the notices were printed early so the county could meet a March 1 deadline to send them out, not because Krumenacker had already ruled on the increase. Cernic said had it been denied, the county would have had to reprint them.

“But the cost would have been nowhere near the over $8 million in deficit spending Doug Lengenfelder did last year,” Cernic said. “He shouldn’t throw darts at anybody.”

Cernic said at the end of the current board’s term, voters will have a chance to evaluate the current commissioners and himself. He said they gave Lengenfelder their answer to his plans in November.

Lengenfelder also weighed in on the county’s recent bond rating downgrade, from BBB stable to BBB negative, which Cambria officials learned about last week.

Lengenfelder said he knows Chernisky will blame him for the downgrade, but said Standard & Poor’s is a forward-thinking agency and “saw something they didn’t like” in the current board.

“They’re not about past, OK? Some people rate you on past performance. Standard & Poor’s wants to see what are you going to do in the future,” he said. “Yes, Standard & Poor’s takes into account past performance. But their real issue is what’s coming up, and how are you going to deal with it?”

Lengenfelder said he believes Chernisky doesn’t understand the county’s budget, so he will take any chance he can to blame others.

Chernisky said Lengen-felder is hiding from the real issues of county debt and deficit spending.

Standard & Poor’s credit analyst Timothy Barrett released a statement explaining the bond revision was based on the county’s fiscal imbalances over the last two fiscal years, “which have reduced the county’s general fund reserve position to negative $8.6 million.”

Barrett noted that the current administration has taken “a number of measures” to improve the county’s financial position but that its debt is still above average.

Cernic said not only is Lengenfelder blaming the current board for problems it inherited, he’s also taking credit for the improved bond rating the county earned in 2014 based on Lengenfelder’s predecessors selling the county’s nursing home.

Chernisky said he plans to present and fact-check some of Lengenfelder’s own testimony from the February tax hearing at today’s press conference.

While Commissioner Wissinger is not listed as attending the conference, Chernisky said he wants people to know the three current commissioners work together and can be professional even when they disagree.

“Lengenfelder took the bull by the horns and was a one-man band. We’re not calling out Mark Wissinger (today). We’re calling out Doug,” he said.

Mirror Staff Writer Kelly Cernetich Brown is at 946-7520.