The finances of La Porte County should be a special concern to every resident, and the latest move by the county commissioners to “clean the county’s balance sheet” by trying to find a way to ignore a $9,000,000 obligation to the Emergency Reserve Fund merits special attention.
This fund was established in 2002 to help avoid fiscal problems when an unexpected economic downturn or a major crisis occurs. The long, drawn out problems with property tax billing our county has experienced created just such a need, and all but $1,000,000 was drawn from the fund to help keep the county solvent.
When the county council created the fund, they carefully crafted language to stipulate clearly that when funds are withdrawn from it, they must be repaid once the crisis has passed. In that way, the fund will be “at the ready” for future use.
Our current county commissioners want to ignore that requirement, claiming that eliminating the debt would make the county’s balance sheet “cleaner.” That’s a “smoke and mirrors” approach to financial management. The claim that doing so would lower the cost of borrowing is interesting, but unsupported.
As concerning as this situation is, it is only a small part of the financial problems of our county. I recently obtained a copy of a little known report entitled “Schedule of Balances by Fund” listing more than 250 funds with balances totaling more than $82,000,000. The report is available to anyone on request from the Auditor’s Office.
Many, if not most, of these funds are outside the control of the county council, raising issues of accountability. Some appear to have lost their purpose. For example, although the bonds for the jail construction were paid off some time ago, there’s still more than $1,750,000 in jail bond funds. The county’s General Fund is shown as being more than $23,000,000 “in the red,” which is quite concerning. This is the fund that supports the overall operation of the county and it means that we have committed far more than was available. Not a good practice!
The issue raised by the commissioner’s desire to avoid repaying the funds owed to the Emergency Reserve Fund is important and needs to be thoughtfully challenged. But beyond that, there needs to be a thorough review of the county’s financial condition and fiscal management.
http://heraldargus.com/articles/2013/07/22/news/opinion/doc51e87a7c8cba2146925723.txt
