One can say, "Here we go again....budget buffoonery, money mischief, treasury tricks....all standard operating procedure in Elbert County."
But folks, this year's budget, budget presentation, financial management, and transparency regarding the county finances are circling the drain in a much more serious descent than in previous years. Our county budget department, consisting of 5 employees (4 of whom have zero accounting experience or education.....and 1 has a 2-year associate's degree in a related field) continues to pat themselves on the back for submitting a timely budget, a timely audit, and "being able to make payroll." Instills a lot of confidence, doesn't it?
But let's take a look at what's really going on:
1) at the public hearing (this translates to a statutory obligation by the county to provide TO THE PUBLIC all information related to the 2016 budget)....there were no copies of the budget available to the public and no power point presentation of the budget...both making it difficult to begin to follow the oral presentation by County Manager Ed Ehmann. Additionally, at the end of the public presentation, the public was informed that the copies of the budget that they had printed from their home computers (because no copies were provided by the county) were not the same document that Mr. Ehmann was presenting to the commissioners. Oh, and, "the draft budget that we are discussing will be available online later this afternoon".....AFTER THE PUBLIC PRESENTATION. Legal? Probably not.
2) Mr. Ehmann stated, at that public hearing presentation and again at the BOCC meeting on 12/9/15, that he had consulted with ALL elected officials and department heads regarding their budgets. Yet the Director of Community Services stated otherwise in front of the public at the public hearing presentation. Could it be because CDS recently lost both of their certified planners, and there is currently no job posting to replace them?
3) Mr. Ehmann also stated, both at the public hearing and at the presentation to the county commissioners (12/9/15) that citizens could access ALL LINE ITEM TOTALS in the budget. Of course, this would have to be through a CORA (open records' request and citizens would have to PAY to see how their taxpayer money was being spent). But when a CORA request was submitted to the county for the amounts in the sheriff's budget leading up to the total expenditures and income amount, the response from the county was, "No such document exists." So which is it, Mr. Ehmann......citizens CAN have access to line items or they CAN'T? And if they are entitled to this information, please explain how.
4) When Commissioner Dore informed Mr. Ehmann, at the 12/9/15 BOCC meeting, that she had not had the opportunity to sit down with department heads regarding their budgets (because commissioners had just received the final budget document 48 hours ahead of when they were to approve it), County Attorney Gateley jumped to the podium, heatedly defending Mr. Ehmann and trying to inject a sense of panic into the entire staff if the budget was not approved immediately. (In actuality, the commissioners could have approved the 2015 budget to be resubmitted to the state and amended it as necessary, once they had the opportunity to meet with department heads).
So the 2016 Elbert County budget, approved by the commissioners on 12/9/15 to be submitted to the state in its primitive format, can best be described as vague, imprecise, ambiguous, unclear....and the list of synonyms goes on. But the harshest criticism has to be the absence of transparency to the citizens whose money is funding this budget.
