At their most recent meetings (December 6th and 13th), the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors has been attempting to belatedly deliver a balanced budget for the new fiscal year that began on July 1.
As I have pointed out in recent columns, there are several problems with that task, which I’ll get to in a moment.
Mark Scaramella, of the Anderson Valley Advertiser, reported this past week that “Supervisor Maureen Mulheren posted an unusual budget explanation video on her ‘mo4mendo’ facebook page. She did it, she said, because she received an email (from whom? we’re not told) asking her to ‘refute’ an unspecified ‘article’ about the Supervisors and the budget, adding, ‘Sometimes the media doesn’t portray things that are happening during our meeting as they are actually happening’.”
I have to say I have no idea about whom or even what Mulheren is talking about.
Although I publish a newspaper, the Mendocino County Observer, I’m not a journalist and have never claimed to be one. I am a communicator, a good government advocate, and someone who represents working people, the middle class, and small business owners, all of which were developed, derived and influenced by my background as a former long-time elected union officer. I almost always write and talk about those issues and problems that affect those groups of people. That’s what I do.
So clearly what’s happening with the county’s budget at this time is something that touches or distresses damn near every person who lives in this county. Therefore, I’m very careful about providing accurate information — almost all of which comes from the public record and established, verified data and sourced documents.
Anyway, I know that perhaps with the exception of Mulheren, all the Supervisors probably would agree with following:
• Fiscal year 2021-22, which ended June 30 of this year, has not been reconciled and closed out yet.
• Federal law that requires that an independent, third-party audit be performed on the 2021-22 books, has yet to be completed because the County has not closed out the 2021-22 fiscal year.
• The California Government Code requires that all local governments, such as Mendocino County, must annually approve a balanced budget, which the County is unable to do at this time because it hasn’t closed out the previous year’s financials, and doesn’t know what the “carryover” is from the old fiscal year to the new fiscal year. Basically, what happens in a closeout is you establish a closing balance for end of year finances, and a starting balance for the new fiscal year. That way you’re dealing with a “clean” set of books that provide you with reliable numbers
• County staff estimate that there is probably a $6.1 million deficit in the 2022-23 budget.
• Board Chairman Ted Williams’ comments regarding the budget and county finances, when he said the following:
At the August 2nd BOS meeting, when he said, “I would like to ask my colleagues for support on direction to the CEO’s office to reach out to the state controller’s office to help us get our books in order. … I’m three and half years into a term. I worry, I’m coming up on the point where I can no longer use the excuse, ‘I’m new here.’ And yet in the three and a half years, I haven’t been able to get a credible financial report. I understand we have three different sets of books. They all differ. Why? … So how much accumulated error is there, and over how many years is it? Ten years? Is it thirty years? Is that why we have different sets of books, with different numbers? Because we never incorporate the outside audit findings? I think we have a financial crisis here, and we just don’t know how bad it is.”
On December 6th Williams led off the BOS meeting with comments that were directed to Assemblyman Jim Wood who was attending via zoom, saying, “I don’t know, when I’ve voted on balanced budgets in the past, whether they were actually balanced, That’s coming to light. We have a health plan that was millions [deficit} over, and part of that was due to a holiday. I understand that’s because we got a call from the state. The state said we had accumulated too much money. We needed to spend it down. I don’t know what department of the state or why they would have done that by phone instead of writing…our finances are in such disarray, if I were in the state’s position, I would be looking at this rural county, thinking, we need to conserve them [place the county under state conservatorship], clean up this mess and then give control back. Do you have any thoughts on how we move forward? We don’t have the local labor pool; we don’t have the funds to hire the staffing. It sounds like we have an office that was based on paper and spreadsheets, not automated systems. I think the Board and staff want to move forward and get our books in order, but we don’t know how.”
At the December 13th meeting, the Supes approved a bifurcated budget plan that reduced the $6.1 million deficit by $2.5 million (through a variety of capital project deferrals and one-time funding sources), but deferred the $3.6 million remaining deficit for resolution in early 2023. That deficit results from the previous self-funded health plan that was replaced several months ago by a new, pooled health care plan that reportedly provides the same coverage but is less costly.
Williams’ comments at the December 6th meeting about, “We have a health plan that was millions over …”, refers to a very convoluted, deep-in-the-weeds structural deficit mess surrounding the old health plan, and I’ll spare you and your valuable time any more details.
The bottom line is the Supes kicked a $3.6 million can down the road to be picked up later because legally there must be an approved balanced budget.
Here’s some free advice, and I forget when and where I first heard this but I’ve never forgotten it:
“Balancing a budget is like going to heaven. Everybody wants to do it, but nobody wants to do what you have to do to get there.”
(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, observer@pacific.net, the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, and is also chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org.)
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