County ringing bell for $300k to offset deficit

Without seeing copies of Whitman County’s 2011 budget proposal, department leaders will spend their Christmas break seeking ways to cut $330,000 from the collective total of their spending plans.

County commissioners told a packed room of county officials during Monday’s budget hearing the county will open 2011 with a budget that will be about $330,000 in the red.

The deficit was news to county leaders, who have not seen their departments’ budgets since handing them over to Auditor Eunice Coker in September.

“I know what I need to run my office. And that’s what I’ve asked for,” said Prosecutor Denis Tracy. “But I have no idea what they’re thinking about giving me. And I don’t see where I’ll have a chance to comment on that.”

Commissioners were set to send those numbers to department heads Wednesday morning. They are set to adopt the annual spending plan Monday.

Currently, commissioners say the county is budgeted to spend around $660,000 more than it will take in, with cash reserves used to offset about half of that balance.

Nobody has yet seen a final version of the budget, as county officials have tried to correct a number of errors.

Monday’s budget hearing was packed with department heads and a number of citizens. Three of those citizens were members of the county’s park board, who were concerned the budget crunch could lead to a gutting of the parks department.

“I am in limbo as far as I haven’t talked to commissioners or heard from them on the budget yet,” Parks Director Tim Myers told the Gazette.

State law requires counties to make copies of their annual budgets available to the public at least two weeks before their first budget hearings. Whitman County conducted its first budget hearing Dec. 13.

“I don’t have a particular budget,” Commissioner Michael Largent said during Monday’s hearing. “I think commissioners are now looking at some concepts.”

The deficit is a stark increase from the $71,000 hole projected earlier, before Largent found $440,000 in interdepartmental money transfers that were not properly booked.

Budget work in past years was done by Sharron Cunningham, who was assistant finance director before commissioners dissolved the finance department in June. Cunningham resigned two days after finance director Bev Divine was fired.

Coker took over preliminary budget preparation in the wake of the finance department’s collapse.

“I think Michael’s done a helluva job trying to mash all these numbers together and trying to get accounts to fit together,” said Commissioner Pat O’Neill. “We’re doing a lot of stabbing in the dark.”

The final concept is to use $330,000 from the county’s cash reserves to pay for the revenue shortfall. The remainder will be cut from the spending authority.

Commissioners had considered putting departments on the same spending plans they had in 2010. That would have reduced the deficit by about $200,000, leaving about $130,000 to cut.

Tracy Monday decried that plan as unfair, saying his office and the office of Sheriff Brett Myers had made serious sacrifices during 2010, and would see disproportionate cuts in 2011.

“This has priorities seriously out of whack,” he said.

Tracy said the plan to have departments cut from their current 2010 budget levels would force him to lay off one of his four deputy prosecutors. That would result in a reduction in the number of cases prosecuted.

Sheriff Brett Myers said he has increased costs for fuel, new radio equipment and deputy health insurance in 2011.

“These are all necessary items, though,” said Myers. “It’s not like we’re buying helicopters or going on extensive training sessions in the Hawaiian islands.”

Radios must be switched to a narrow band system to meet Federal Communications Commission requirements. Most deputies were insured through the Washington Counties Insurance Pool, which folded last month, and his office will have to pay more for their insurance.

Commissioner Greg Partch said the 2011 budget will be looked at again in July. He said the budget can be amended next year if the deficit leads to a loss of jobs.

Tracy, though, said that plan is “untenable.”

“This is not a responsible way to treat your employees. My deputy prosecutor should not have to live in fear for his job from month to month,” he said. “Not when we have a record amount of cash in the bank.”

As of November, the county had $2.3 million in its cash reserves. Another $1.2 million sits in a restricted reserve account that can only be tapped by an official act of the commissioners.

Also eating into the $2.3 million figure is a $216,000 write-off the county is planning to make before year’s end to match up the investments recorded on the general ledger with those shown on bank statements.

Tracy noted the county could use $330,000 to plug the deficit hole and still have $2.9 million left in total reserves.

“This is a little more than 25 percent of the county’s current expense budget for the year,” he said. “And it’s sitting in the bank.

He said Spokane County reduced its reserve policy from 10 percent of the yearly budget to eight percent this year in order to maintain funding for law enforcement.

Partch noted the county’s 2010 spending is more than $600,000 out of balance, according to the November financial report given Monday by Gary Petrovich, director of administrative services.

Partch noted Petrovich’s report said revenues through November 2010 of $10,154,400 were well behind the budgeted revenue total of $12,488,000.

“Those are some alarming numbers,” said Partch. “If our revenue keeps lagging like that, we could be in serious trouble.”

Spending too, though, was down from the $12,488,000 budget number to $10,783,497.

Coker said many departments budget more than they expect to spend in some areas. That leftover money is taken and put into the county’s cash reserve accounts.

“You could go a lot higher here than 300k and still have enough to cover it,” she said.

Coker suggested commissioners could cut more in July if the deficit persisted.

But Partch said waiting until July to make cuts would be “the chicken’s way out.”

“There’s just no good way to do it,” he said. “You’re just forestalling six months, and that six months may mean the difference.”

Commissioners said they will monitor monthly progress throughout 2011 to see if adjustments need to be made. They said numbers should become better known in July, after the half-million dollar New World accounting system has been operating for two months and after they see if the legislature has placed any additional funding requirements on the county.

“We’re going to be watching this like a hawk in 2011,” said O’Neill.