Well, Mr. Smith was right.
In a previous blog entry (A Taxpayer Speaks...), I posted remarks made recently by Mr. Benny Smith to the Hamblen County Commission. Mr. Smith talked to Commission about the two sets of financial numbers or records that are kept and used by the County Mayor's Office.
A little bit of background information might help readers understand what Mr. Smith was talking about. Hamblen County has two sets of financial records: (1) the Mayor's computer records of yearly spending and (2) the audited end-of-year spending records.
At yesterday's budget committee meeting, it was time to find out for certain which set of financial numbers the Commission has been given.
Are we using the audited financial numbers (that the Mayor calls the county's "Financial Bible") or are we using the Mayor's uncorrected computer numbers in preparing our budget?
Why is it important to use the audited numbers? Because they are the most accurate spending records available---even the Mayor acknowledges this when he refers to the audit as the county's
"financial Bible."
When I took office in 2002, Commissioner Phillips, Commissioner Osborne, and I began to push for a more accurate budget process. As the basis of an improved budget process, we wanted to use the most accurate historical spending records available. We proposed and the Commission adopted audited-based budgeting.
With audited-based budgeting, Commission asked that our budget documents include a 5-year history of audited spending so that we could see how previous years' spending compared to the proposed spending plan in the current county budget.
To find out which records we have been given, I asked Finance Director Nicole Epps where the 2004 spending records in our budget book come from.
Evidently, she didn't understand what I was asking, so I asked: "Are the 2004 spending figures that we are looking at in our budget books from your computer records or from the 2004 audit?"
Nicole answered that the 2004 records that we have been given are from a Bridges Computer program. I guess that means we are doing Bridges-based budgeting instead of audited-based budgeting!
Using the computer records means that we are using unaudited and uncorrected numbers even though Commission adopted audited-based budgeting years ago for the purpose of having the most accurate available record of county spending in front of us during each budget cycle.
All the historical spending (02-03, 03-04, 04-05) that commission has been given comes from unaudited/uncorrected computer records even though audits for all three of those years were available on March 31.
This commission wanted and voted for more accuracy in the budgeting process by adopting audited-based budgeting, but we didn't get it.
It is unfortunate that the County Mayor and his Finance Department have snubbed the entire Commission.
Actually, it is more than unfortunate and it is more than a snub.
Taxpayers, too, deserve to know that the most accurate records available --audited records--are given to their commissioners and are used by the County Mayor and the Finance Department in the budget cycle.
This is just one of the reasons I spoke yesterday of the mess we are in after just three budget meetings.
Forgotten debt payments ($1 million), overstated revenue ($200,000+), insurance miscalculation ($110,000), money put into budgets (e.g. Cherokee Park) that shouldn't even be there ($15,000), money moved to a budget (Trustee) but never taken out of the budget (Assessor) that it came from.
And now---the admission that county commissioners have been given old, uncorrected, unaudited expense records to use in the budget process. It's a mess, and there is little or no accountability. Taxes, appraisals, and revenues go up and up and up, and politicians come up with plans to spend every penny of every increase and more. And if that isn't enough, the politicians borrow millions, spend it, and then just pay the interest only, happily passing the debt on to their children.
What happened to common sense and fiscal responsibility?
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