Publisher's Note: Jim Bispo's weekly column appears in the Beaufort Observer.
Guess what. It's time to put our next county budget together. Boy!! Time really seems to fly when you're having fun...
Every year the county staff provides budget guidance to the organizations comprising the county government (and some who don't), accepts the budget requests, and "massages" them into a presentation for the County Commissioners. Citizens are allowed to comment on the presentation. Unfortunately, by the time that happens, it seems as though virtually all the horse trading that usually accompanies a budget has already happened and it is pretty much impossible to effect much change.
As an aside, there are a couple of changes that would certainly be welcome. That would be an easily read exhibit that documents the prior year approved amounts together with all the expected (requested??) funding associated with each activity and showing the amounts and source of those funds. It would also be interesting to see both the prior year and current year approved and actual spending compared to the estimated amounts. Perhaps of even greater interest would be some quantifiable measures of output for each of the activities being funded. (i.e. What are we getting for our money??) I believe the county staff has been working on quantifying output measures for some time. Hopefully, it will come to fruition before too long.
The fact that it is an election year allows us to press the candidates for County Commissioner for explicit commitments concerning taxation and the uses to which the resulting revenue should be put. Of course, every candidate will tell us they are in favor of lower taxes, improved efficiency, less waste fraud and abuse and all manner of other good sounding things. The problem has always been figuring out who is telling the truth and who is misleading us just to get elected. We really need to try and pin 'em down to specifics if we can. The advantage we have this time is that we should have a pretty good idea what is being requested in the budget and we might even be able to get commitments from the candidates as to what they support and where they stand on the various proposals. We will have to either accept or not accept the word of the non-incumbent candidates, but we will be able to compare the rhetoric of the incumbents with what they have supported in the past and what they end up supporting in the current (new) budget. (This should be almost as good as Term Limits - which is to say that those who are less than forthcoming can be turned out of office.) Already we see Jay McRoy voting with the Reps. to freeze the real property tax rate and Al Klemm talking in favor of it, but voting the other way. (Is that what you call integrity??) It is not too early to start looking for statements of policy concerning the County's funding needs from those who would seek our votes in November. This becomes increasingly important when you have a number of "crossovers" (i.e. folks who changed their party affiliation because they didn't think they could be elected by running as Dems but figured the Reps might be dumb enough to elect them). Well it worked for Rep Jones, didn't it?? It is also important to pin down folks who were elected under one banner but fairly consistently vote with the other party. Hmmm...
It is truly unfortunate that our budgets (at the Federal, State, and Local levels) are developed on a "change basis". That is to say that the take off point for the new budget is the last budget. Money that was included in the prior year budget almost never gets much conversation as we focus our energy on evaluating the requests for new funding. It is clearly time to change that focus. The upcoming election may give us an opportunity to do just that (for this budget cycle at least).
The so called "Outside Agency Budget Requests" section of our budget offers a fertile ground for finding out just how serious our Commissioners are about being good shepherds of the money they take from us to fund the County Government. The Outside Agency Budget Requests include most of the 501(c)(3) organizations in the area, all of which claim to be dedicated to improving the lots of folks in the county and some of which actually do. The question is not whether they are worthwhile. The question is, should the taxpayers be funding them through a process in which money is taken forcibly (some folks say "stolen") by the county government to be redistributed?? Or, should those organizations be funded by voluntary contributions from the taxpayers depending on the value ascribed to each of them by the donors?? The underlying question is, what is the County's responsibility for funding the not-for-profits?? And, from whence cometh that responsibility?? The same might also be said about funding Al Klemm's favorites, the Chambers of Commerce. And, of course, lurking in the background is the Turnage theater and it's financial situation. Even though there apparently isn't enough community interest and support to keep them financially viable, they'll more than likely be back for more taxpayer money. ("We must protect the vast amount of money we have already spent there.") Has no one ever heard of "sunk cost"??
By the way, speaking about the Turnage, has anyone looked at their 2010 tax return (the latest I could find)?? It shows some rather interesting things. First of all, it shows that more than 46% of their expenditures are for "Management and General Expenses" leaving the other 54 % (roughly) for "Program Service Expenses". (Ahhh... the beauty of being a non-profit.) Does that suggest a situation that might deserve a little attention?? It does to some. Additionally, it would certainly be interesting to know what the presumably for-profit Turnage Manager, LLC and Turnage Lessor LLC Partnership are all about and how their finances relate to the Turnage foundation finances. I am not suggesting any chicanery, but I am suggesting that we should be entitled to know a whole lot more about their finances in view of all the taxpayer money already showered on the Turnage.
And then there's the EDC.
A perfect example of Government mismanagement and waste of taxpayer money is the EDC. The latest example is the Quick Start II (QS II) building. There are a lot of folks (several of our incumbent Commissioners not among them) who question the need for (if not the propriety of) taxpayer funding of activities like the EDC for example. Lately we have seen some very well prepared and thoroughly documented expositions of all the taxpayer money that has been wasted by the EDC. It seems that about all we get out of the EDC is an occasional full page ad in the WDN (and Belhaven's Beaufort-Hyde News) extolling their virtue.
In a front page WDN article on 3/15, we are told that it is going to cost quite a bit more than earlier estimated to get our neglected QS II building back into shape. And then we are told that suddenly there are three companies (not one, not two, but three) showing an interest in out great blue elephant (perhaps white would have been better - but it's too late now). How fortuitous... Could anyone have predicted this?? Of course the names cannot be released (as usual). But perhaps what can be released is how much taxpayer money are we offering in order to entice whoever it is to Beaufort County. How much in outright handouts (grants) of State and County funds??; how much in forgiven income and property tax??; how much other "sweeteners"?? And what do we get in return?? Or are those things we are not entitled to know until a deal is finalized?? (i.e. pretty much after it's too late to do anything about them)
If there wasn't so much taxpayer money tied up in this building, the entire situation would be funny. (Actually, there are quite a few folks around here who believe that between the Commissioners - well, at least five of them - and the EDC, they make F Troop look good. Do you remember F Troop, don't you??) Here we have a group of self styled entrepreneurs trying to figure out how to require someone who is about buy a $2M building to commit to some amount of new hiring. Give me a break. Who among us believes that someone is going to spend that kind of money on a facility and then not do something with it in order to get some return on their investment?? (Assuming it's their money.) Even if they are able to put the operation of the facility on "auto pilot" as seems to have been done for the construction of the facility, they are going to have to hire some people to keep the poorly constructed facility maintained and take care of paying the light bill etc. So there's your new hiring And what if they don't?? If it's their money, who cares?? If it isn't their money, we should not "walk away" from the deal, we should run.
Who among us believes that a realtor specializing in commercial property wouldn't be able to "move" the building a lot more quickly than a self styled "economic developer"?? Of course, prospective purchasers may prefer to deal with an amateur "economic developer" rather than a professional Realtor. With Al Klemm and the Committee of 100 on your side, how could our amateur "economic developer" go wrong?? How could they go wrong, indeed!! Realtors know how to close deals. They know that if they don't close the deal, they don't get paid. (Note to the County Commissioners: That's called "motivation", and it's what Capitalism is all about.) Economic developers get paid regardless. In the meantime, we are surely going to have fix everything before we go to settlement and then make full disclosure to any prospective purchaser. They are likely going to have to be alerted to the fact that re-caulking the panels is going to be a continuing (and expensive) part of preventative building maintenance. High maintenance requirements like that surely do not add much to the value of the building. Its too bad that the (almost new) QS II building requires so much work to put it back into "new" condition - otherwise we could perhaps use it for the new jail. Just a little reinforcing of the walls and some other minor changes and we could solve our "jail" problem. But, alas, it would probably be cheaper to build a new jail from scratch than to fix the existing (almost new) building. Does anyone remember just who was responsible for the proper construction of that building??
If you stop to think about it, it's a small wonder that after the EDC has poured bucket after bucket of other people's money on Beaufort County, we are still a Tier 1 county. Our outlook seems to be that whatever the EDC (and their handmaiden, The Committee of 100) wants to do, we do. For some reason or other we don't ever seem to learn. There seems to be no end of folks who believe that we can spend our way to prosperity (with other people's money). Whaaaaat???
As we look at our upcoming budget, the question that needs to be answered is, "Can we in good conscience continue to fund an activity that has shown itself to be such a waste of taxpayer money??" Short answer: No!! No matter what kinds of promises of a rosy future we get out of the EDC director and the Committee of 100, the answer is still a resounding "No!!".
After we take a good hard look at all the waste and poorly allocated funding we have been experiencing over the years, we need to - and should - focus on how badly we need more sales tax income?? There are more than just a few folks in the county who believe that a truly "scrubbed down budget" would not only cover things like the proposed new jail but could at the same time support a decrease in the tax rate. It's sure worth a try.
D'ya think??
