Though election news will dominate, more and more counties are finding themselves in financial hot water. Last year, New Hanover County discoverd they had counted excempt property in their revaluation leading to a $10+ million error. Chowan followed this year with a $20 million hole in their budget and now Orange County is missing millions.
According to county Finance Director Gary Humphreys, more than $15.5 million is missing from individual capital project accounts — sort of. Most of that money, he said, isn’t really missing but was logged under the wrong accounts or line items or will come from bonds that have already been approved but have yet to be sold.
And it gets better.
Commissioner Mike Nelson said, “Now in probably the
toughest budget year we’ve had in a decade, we’re going to have to find
[more than] $5 million to cover these mistakes.” County
Manager Laura Blackmon said moving the $5.9 million will bring the
county’s fund balance to about $22 million, or 11.1 percent of annual
expenditures. That’s where it would have been had the accounting
mistakes not been made, but it’s nearly 30 percent below the county’s
informal target of 15 percent.
How do such mistakes occur? Well, the over reliance on managers means that commissioners aren’t nearly as watchful. And when mistakes occur, the commissioners get to point to the manager rather than accepting the responsibility for their failure to keep a watchful eye. But again, throughout the story, you don’t read that the county should be cutting spending, just that they have to find more money. This is Chapel Hill after all. (HT-DM)