July 15, 2009
Government budgets are complicated, things were moving fast, it’s the worst financial crisis of our generation.
Yadda, yadda, yadda.
The county can make all the excuses in the world, but discovering we have $36 million in the bank rather than a $12 million deficit, as we’d been told over and over, isn’t exactly like finding a fiver in your jeans after you pull ’em out of the dryer.
Based on this little budget “oopsie” and others (oh yes, they have priors), it’s hard not to wonder who’s counting the chickens over there.
“There’s no question, and I said it long before we knew about the $36 million, that one of the biggest obstacles we face with potential layoffs and cutting services, is people thinking we’ve been here before,” Sheriff Donny Youngblood told me about how this “surprise” money affects department heads. “They feel like we’ve bluffed and we’ve bluffed and we’ve bluffed. I have a hard time convincing the staff that it’s real this time.
“And it is real.”
Even more so when you figure what the state might grab from counties in its tortuous efforts to close its own gap. Kern’s “found” money is likely to be swiped entirely and then some, forcing us to cut even deeper.
Until then, the Sheriff’s Department plans to:
• Lay off 15 civilians who manned the phone service desk. They took 7,500 reports last year. Deputies will now have to take over their duties.
• Lay off six of 12 evidence technicians who process crime scenes.
• Lay off 45 detentions deputies and move deputies into the main jail.
In the face of these kind of dire circumstances, Youngblood and others I spoke with were embarrassed by the mistake.
“It’s hard to convince the public we’re competent when this kind of thing happens,” Youngblood said.
“The public should be skeptical,” Supervisor Don Maben told me.
“It definitely raises a credibility issue, there’s no escaping that,” Supervisor Mike Maggard said.
“The heart of the issue is, these aren’t just numbers, it’s about credibility,” Supervisor Mike Rubio agreed.
While timing has put a brighter spotlight on this goof, it’s happened before.
In October 2007, the County Administrative Office found an extra $18 million between the county’s seat cushions. Most of that, $10 million, was unexpected revenue.
About $8 million, however, was leftover from the previous year’s budget, which makes me wonder, again: Did someone forget the batteries in their calculator?
We pay people good money — new CAO John Nilon earns $191,278.81 a year in salaryplus $93,973.77 in bennies and Auditor/Controller Ann Barnett pulls in $153,779.26 salary and $80,875.27 in benefits each year (holy cow!) — to keep their eye on the county’s fiscal ball. This latest episode shows that, clearly, someone dropped that ball.
Everyone I talked with reminded me the $36 million was in the black rather than the red column.
Well, whoopee for us, but given what we know of this snafu so far — Barnett’s and Nilon’s offices apparently not sharing information — it could just as easily have gone the other way.
Supervisors reiterated on Tuesday their call for an investigation into what the heck happened, including a report on whether the county needs a more centralized budgeting system (each department currently uses its own budget methods and software).
Good.
Because despite Nilon’s comments that we can’t “live life looking in the rearview mirror,” you can’t fix what you don’t know is broken.
Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com
