ELIZABETHTOWN -- The Essex County Board of Supervisors has a message for department heads that could be very unpopular.

The message: Don't buy anything.

Supervisor Thomas Scozzafava (R-Moriah), chairman of the County Finance Committee, said this week that he's establishing a moratorium on county purchases.

He said it doesn't matter if the money to buy something is already in a department's annual budget.

"What equipment or items have been budgeted for that they have yet to purchase?" Scozzafava said. "We need to sit down and see if it's critical."

Scozzafava asked County Manager Clifford Donaldson Jr. to get memos out to all department heads about the change.

After the Board of Supervisors OK'd purchase of a $10,000 Citrix network server from budgeted funds for Real Property Tax Services, Scozzafava said future purchases by any department should be vetted by the Board of Supervisors first.

The county may be in dire financial straits soon, Scozzafava said, as fuel and commodity prices continue to climb.

He said he's already heard from some department heads who don't like the new policy, but revenue coming into the county is not keeping pace with predictions.

"Our sales-tax collections are just $7,000 ahead of last year. That could easily turn into a deficit."

County Treasurer Michael Diskin said sales-tax revenue is not increasing this year as the county had hoped.

The sales-tax money collected through May was just slightly ahead of last year for the same period, he said.

"It's not as much as we've seen in the past. If we continue this way, we'll bring in somewhere about what we brought in last year."

The county collected $23 million from its 3.75-percent sales tax last year.

The rising cost of gasoline could impact tourism, one of the county's main industries, with fewer people traveling and spending money, and that would also hurt Essex County's sales-tax collection this summer.