Just a reminder that Gov. Bev Perdue’s budget is less transparent than promised. She “recommended that funding for various operating accounts be reduced across [each] agency” and recommended elimination of “either filled or vacant positions,” neither of which is particularly helpful to those of us outside a specific agency and may not be helpful to managers within the agency either.
Beyond that, the “Truth-in-Budgeting” Reform to budget salaries at less than 100% “to more closely match the actual salary expenditures” puts the savings in the expansion budget, where they can easily disappear (though with no more specificity) but, “Budget line items which normally use lapsed salaries for the agency’s operation were increased in the continuation budget.”
The continuation budget, for the uninitiated, is where spending goes to avoid detection and live forever. What do you think the odds are that the lapsed salaries find their way back into the final budget in addition to the items that they used to fund?
For real truth in budgeting, check our Back to Basics Budget.
