New system hits Sheriff's department hardest
BY DALE ELLIS 08/24/2001
Managing Editor
The new computers the county uses for bookkeeping are to blame for the shortfall in the sheriff's department that led to the patrol cars being parked for a time, county clerk Doug Faith said Thursday. Faith said the sheriff's department was affected so drastically because it makes up the largest part of the county budget and has higher expenditures than the other offices, but the new system should give county officials a better picture of the overall health of the budget at any given time.
"We've got a lot better picture of where we are budget-wise than we ever have before," Faith said.
The budget problems that arose from the changeover to the new system apparently stemmed from some bills incurred in the last month of 2000 being paid out of the 2001 budget. Sheriff Pat Garrett said that, coupled with more calls and higher gasoline prices, caused his department to run short, requiring him to ask the quorum court for more money.
Garrett's budget was lightened by $36,484 from the sheriff's office budget, and $44,102 from the detention center budget. Recently, the sheriff ordered that the patrol deputies respond only to calls involving life threatening emergencies in order to conserve fuel. The department actually ran over its fuel budget in August.
After the August 21 quorum court meeting, in which the justices restored $60,000 to the sheriff's budget, the deputies began running normal patrols once again.
The sheriff was not the only one to feel the pinch that came from the new accounting system. Faith said that all departments, including the county clerk's, were affected to some degree, although the sheriff's department took the largest hit.
"It'll be okay next year," Faith said. "It just happened that way this year. It would have been different if we hadn't changed sheriffs. Jess Odom knew what was coming and would have expected it. It looks like we did this on purpose because we have a new sheriff, but it would have happened to Jess, too. Every department had December bills paid out of their 2001 budgets."
Debra Lang, the White County tax assessor, said that her department had about $1,000 taken out to pay December bills from her 2001 reappraisal and assessor's office budgets. The two combined budgets equal just under $600,000.
"Luckily, I didn't have a bunch of carryover bills from last year," Lang said. "I did have a couple and I was a little upset, but not nearly as much as I would have been if I had been the sheriff with the kind of budgets he has to deal with.
"It was a couple of small bills, but it still threw me because I wasn't expecting it," she said, saying that she believes county heads were notified but she missed the notification.
However, Faith said that no such notification was ever made, as he said he did not think it
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would cause a problem for most departments. He said the problems that affected the sheriff's department came about because officials there did not have a true picture of the budget situation.
"The sheriff's office keeps their own books over there and they don't agree with ours," Faith said. "Ours are the official books, but they were going by theirs and got into trouble."
Asked if the county's actions were proper, Faith said it was a bookkeeping matter designed to simplify accounting procedures and to help officials track spending more efficiently.
"I'll have to see and talk to the auditors to see what we want to do at the end of this year," he said. "It's a work in progress, but it's working well. When I arrived in 1995, it could take up to three weeks to pay a bill. Now we can get it taken care of in one day most of the time."
He said the previous system had the county working out of two different budgets, which made accounting difficult at times.
"You can hide all sorts of things in the previous year's budget because no one ever looks there after it is closed," he said. "I could go without spending anything out of my budget if I charged everything back to the previous year."
Even so, whatever budget is worked out of, the money still comes from one place, the county general fund. That is the one that worries county treasurer Waylon Heathscott. His estimates indicate that the county will have only about an $890,000 carryover to start next year off. This year, the county had $1.2 million to carry over from 2000.
If the current rate of spending were adhered to, and reveunes stay at the current rate, county general fund figures indicate that the county will have less than $50,000 left in the county general fund by the end of April.
Tax revenues typically do not begin coming in to any great degree until July or August, which would leave the county with very little reserve for at least three months.
Heathscott said White County is not the only one that is having trouble making ends meet. He talked to officials from around the state at the summer convention of the Association of Arkansas Counties recently in Hot Springs, and said many counties are facing the same problems.
"Everyone I talked to is worried about what they are going to start the year with," Heathscott said. "And law enforcement is the big gorilla. They've either got jail problems, meth labs, they need more deputies, crime is increasing, they just need more money."
He said the county road department has plently of money, but by statute, that money cannot be touched for any purpose but county roads. That was a good system, he said, when roads were in such poor shape, but now that they are beginning to improve, the county general fund is in poor shape with no way to bail it out.
"When I was county judge, we transferred money from county general to county roads to keep that department afloat," Heathscott said. "Now, we need to do the same thing, but to prop up county general, and we can't. It's against the law."
Compared to last year, the budget figures begin to look even worse, he said. The amount of money in the county general fund, at just over a half-million dollars by the end of July, is well below the amount at the same time last year.
"We're already running $200,000 below last year, and the budget is greater," he said. "If the revenues don't offset that, we'll be $200,000 down by the end of the year."
With the cost of services increasing, all he can do, Heathscott said, is keep a close eye on the budget and try to keep the county out of trouble