County budget held up by color print job

Whitman County commissioners conducted their first public hearing on the county’s 2011 budget Monday night with one notable absence - the budget.

Commissioners Pat O’Neill and Greg Partch said they had not received a budget draft from Auditor Eunice Coker that could be used to finalize next year’s spending plan.

“You cannot look into the future, or even begin to plan, if you don’t have a good set of numbers,” said O’Neill. “A lot of other counties know they’re deep in the hole and people have got to leave.”

Whitman County is not to that point yet because, said O’Neill, of the delay in the budget process.

Coker, though, said commissioners have had the working budget for at least the past two weeks.

“You do have a preliminary budget in front of you,” Coker told commissioners Monday night.

"Not in a reliable form," replied Partch. "What we've got in front of us right now does me no good."

Coker said she emailed updated copies of the budget to Maribeth Becker, commissioners’ clerk, and Becker sent those electronic copies of the budget on to commissioners.

Only Commissioner Michael Largent had opened it and recognized it as the budget. Partch and O’Neill at the hearing told Coker they wanted paper copies of the budget.

“My preference is to have it look like it has in the past,” said Partch.

Largent attributed the confusion of his colleagues to different levels of comfort with technology.

“Greg hasn’t been working on it because it hasn’t been in the printed color format he likes working with and that he’s used to working with,” said Largent.

Partch said he did not have printed copies in his budget binder. In prior years, former budget director Sharron Cunningham had prepared binders with department-by-department budget breakdowns for each commissioner.

Cunningham resigned from the county’s finance department in June after commissioners fired director Bev Divine and dissolved the department. Coker then took over budget preparation.

Largent was adamantly against the move to fire Divine. He said the county is now paying for that decision.

“We are realizing some of the downside now,” said Largent. “And that is that this loss of institutional knowledge is going to make going ahead that much more difficult.”

O’Neill said this year’s bumpy budget process is worth the long-term benefits the county will realize after the June decisions regarding the finance department.

“I knew this wouldn’t be easy when we started with all this,” he said. “But in the end, the county is better off for it.”

As for the budget, Coker said the county looks to open 2011 with a $71,913 deficit between spending and revenue. Previous figures showed a $131,913 deficit, but Treasurer Robert Lothspeich told Coker to pencil in $60,000 more revenue expected from sales taxes.

Strong retail sales, primarily from large Pullman businesses, have bolstered the county’s sales tax collection for this year $160,000 ahead of the budgeted $1.1 million figure. Lothspeich said he anticipates Pullman’s new WalMart to further increase sales tax revenue next year.

The current expense operating fund is expected to bring in $11,667,920 in revenue and pay out $11,739,833.

Overall, the county’s entire budget, including the dedicated funds, is $786,919 off balance. The dedicated funds balance each year, but Coker said they are out of balance this year because several accounts formerly tended to by the finance department are in limbo.

Overall revenues are projected at $54,630,633, while spending is $55,417,552.

Commissioners said they wanted a solid deficit number to work with before they begin negotiating with department heads over individual budgets.

Partch questioned Coker’s deficit number, saying interest revenue and grants have dropped off significantly this year, while spending has not dropped accordingly.

Largent, in his review of the budget, found several accounts that did not balance.

He said Monday afternoon he discovered a $400,000 imbalance in money transfers between various accounts.

Those imbalances may not mean anything to the bottom line, he cautioned, as some may be outside the operating budget and others may be attributable to accounting omissions.

“I don’t know what it means,” he said.

Esther Wilson, county systems administrator who has been acting as the county’s financial officer since June, said unraveling the transfers could be a lengthy process.

“If they don’t balance, then you’ve got to hunt and peck,” she said.

Wilson added such transfers usually take cash from the county’s surplus reserves and use it to balance another account.

Wilson added any discrepancies in the county’s 2011 budget will be made apparent with the new, half-million dollar New World accounting system. The software, purchased in 2005, is expected to be brought online early next year.

New World programs, said Wilson, do not allow accounts to be out of balance, and force fund managers to match spending with revenue, unlike the current, almost 30-year-old accounting software.