Decrease in Revenues Prompts Layoffs and a Commitment to Conservative Budgeting

The major ongoing issue in Ada County right now has always been my big issue: government spending and the budget. One would have to live in a vacuum not to recognize the downturn in the economy. Consequently, County revenues are down, and people are now losing their jobs.

Despite my overall belief in limiting the size and scope of government, decisions to lay people off are not made lightly. We all recognize that County employees are real people with families at home to support. We also recognize the responsibility we have to our taxpaying constituents, particularly in light of decreasing revenues.

Thankfully, my Commission colleagues have changed the County’s budgeting process since I was in office previously, in 2001 and 2002. Back then, my colleagues strongly supported what they called ECB - Expenditure Control Budgeting. Every department would get the same amount of money they had the prior year plus a factor for growth as well as the three percent annual increase allowable under state law. Under ECB, seventy-five (75) percent of dollars that were unspent at the end of the budget year would be returned to the department for use the following year with no justification required. The other twenty-five (25) percent would be returned to the County’s general fund for future reallocation, particularly for large capital projects.

The County now uses BFO - Budgeting For Outcomes. I think my colleagues are onto something here. They have made a greater effort to solicit public input, with an online budget survey last year, and they tried to take the public’s priorities into consideration when setting the budget.

I have always advocated implementing Zero-Based budgeting. Zero-based budgeting would provide the Board the opportunity to preview and analyze all of the County’s expenditures on a line item by line item basis. My suggestion would be to do so on a four-year cycle. In other words, we would examine a quarter of the County’s annual expenditures in great depth every year.

In fact, we are already beginning to do just that. In recent weeks, as it has become painfully clear that revenues are dropping and that expenditures must be cut accordingly, my Commission colleagues and I have begun looking at expenditures for dues and subscriptions, business meals, conferences, training, and education.

There are benefits to each of these budgeting systems. Budgeting For Outcomes, adopted before I took office, serves to ensure public input and participation in the budget process. You will get no argument from me on that topic! Zero-based budgeting allows for the greatest budget scrutiny and the highest level of accountability for all expenditures.

The good news is that these two budgeting systems are not mutually exclusive. Both can work side-by-side. It is my hope that in the near future, my Commission colleagues and I formally adopt Zero-Based Budgeting as a complement to the Budgeting For Outcomes process that is already in place.

Hopefully, it has been and will continue to be with sensitivity and sensibility that my colleagues and I act to head off a huge potential budget shortfall in the years to come.