We’ve often thought that local government needs better oversight, especially in financial matters.
One can attend, or watch online, many local government bodies where much of many meetings is filled with “happy talk” about how great things are, what a great job the jurisdiction’s bureaucrats are doing, and what a great resource it is that the county/city/town has a lot of savings in the bank.
What this latter claim really means is a demonstration of how over-taxed the local citizenry is. If the jurisdiction’s “savings” far exceed its annual expenditures, that is not something to be applauded in our judgment. It is, rather, an indictment of how much higher than needed were the tax rates imposed on local property owners.
But there should be concern about some of the “fine print” in a couple of audits that have been presented to local boards recently. Earlier this month, it was Burlington’s city council that heard a report; this week it was the county commissioners.
In both cases, however, the findings are similar – and should be concerning.
In both cases, the proportion of each jurisdiction’s “savings” declined – and not, we might add, because they offered a more reasonable tax rate for their residents.
Rather, the savings accounts declined, either in real dollars (Burlington) or proportionately (county government) because the elected officials layered on many mid-year spending splurges that had the effect of raiding the “savings.”
It used to be, as we observed many local government bodies over the years, the jurisdiction’s manager would raise concerns every time some board member or council member had an idea that entailed wanting to spend more money in the middle of the year.
“We’ll consider that at the next budget,” used to be the stock reply.
Now, more often than not, however, it is the bureaucrats, themselves, who are bringing forward the ideas to bust the budget in the middle of a budget year.
And, unfortunately, county commissioners and Burlington city council members have been more than willing co-conspirators in spending, spending, and spending some more.
It also used to be that the mid-year “ideas” for more spending were in the thousands, for some little project or another, which was bad enough. But now, many of the ideas are in the millions, multiplying the negative budget consequences.
And to the extent these mid-year spending extravagances deal with salaries, these also often boost the consequences in next year’s fiscal situation – inasmuch as raises inevitably build up the “mandatory” expenses that must be covered in the next fiscal year’s budget.
Unfortunately, neither Burlington’s city council nor the county’s commissioners have an accountant among their current membership.
But someone on each board needs to be putting the brakes on these spendthrift tendencies.
And more examination, and explanation, needs to be made about some of the “footnotes” or other “fine print” that’s being used to conceal, or at least camouflage, tendencies that can have long-lasting, negative consequences for the taxpayers in each jurisdiction.
