From Lenee Lovejoy:While the Hays County Commissioners' Court was in executive session this week, County Auditor Bill Herzog spoke frankly with me and others about the county budget and debt.
His answers shed light on concerns that "Watch On Gov" reported last week following the County Budget Workshop.
First, in regard to the approximately $42 million revision made to the amount of debt that Hays County held on October 1, 2010: this revision had been made earlier, but the STATEMENT OF INDEBTEDNESS that is posted on the county website had not been updated to reflect this change. This was an oversight and will be corrected.
The county's debt level was revised because a $42,220,000 bond issue that had been projected to take place in September of 2010 did not occur. It is now projected to occur this year.
Second, in regard to the 2010-2011 Budget showing the county operating at a deficit this year: this is indicative of how government budgets work.
As Mr. Herzog explained, a county budget is a comprehensive list of everything that might possibly need to be spent in the upcoming year, rather than a list of everything they believe will actually be spent.
As a result, when a county plans a budget, it is not unusual for it to project expenses that are greater than revenues, and show the difference coming out of reserves.
The important numbers to look at are the actual numbers that are reported after the fiscal year ends.
13 comments:
Of course this was an oversight. That is what you do to scare citizens into buying your BS newsletter and prop up Brannon as some sort of guru to save us all from the big bad Conley and the all of a sudden corrupt Bert Cobb.
So we wasted our time reading your overly long and inaccurate last Roundup submission and getting referred to your disguised conspiracy theory county anti-corruption newsletter.
Please, stop this BS now, Roundup publisher. Your own credibility is now at stake.
Thank you for the clarification, Ms Lovejoy. After your discussion with the auditor, the county has now corrected the erroneous information on their website. Until it was pointed out to them, the county simply had not flagged that borrowing as "unissued".
Good example of the need to have reliable data from the county in order for the citizens to understand what is really happening.
Watch on WatchOnGov is a great blog site.
It points out the hypocrisy of amateurish budget experts flim-flaming citizens to get money based on anger and fear and to soon establish a campaign fund scam to elect their Tea Party-lite reps to locals offices - creating money to spend regardless of the electoral outcome.
Nice work if you can get it - from gullible and trusting citizens who think a BBA is something special.
Sure sounds to me like Anon of March 30, 1:32 PM is a third person part of the menage a trois Love-Joy/Brannon conspirators.
The facts are Lovejoy and her group did not do thorough research and this Anon lackey is trying to make it look like the County was in error. Typical right wing LiberTea Republican Party twisting of the facts.
Let the buyer beware.
Sounds to me like you are drawing conclusions without knowing the FACTS. It is a FACT that the county had an erroneous debt schedule on the county website. I know this to be a fact because I looked at it. It is also a fact that this debt schedule was not corrected until AFTER Ms. Lovejoy had her discussion with the auditor....over a week after Mr. Brannon made his presentation. Do you honestly think Mr. Brannon is at fault for relying on the county's erroneous debt schedule?
No, I am not part of Mr. Brannon's group. I have not attended a single presentation by his group and did not attend his presentation to the court.
Let the reader be aware.
Lovejoy states:
"....when a county plans a budget, it is not unusual for it to project expenses that are greater than revenues, and show the difference coming out of reserves.
The important numbers to look at are the actual numbers that are reported after the fiscal year ends."
This says that Brannon and Lovejoy made their own fear-driven assumptions that the County was trying to hide something, when it fact is it just government inefficiency at play.
So, Anon of March 30, 6:03 PM, you are still trying to foolishly defend false assumptions on WatchOnGov's part. If this weren't the case, they wouldn't have written such a weak clarification here.
Let the buyers beware and the readers beware - again!
And it is good you are not part of their budgetfest.
Hays County has done and is still doing some very odd things like still not fining or tossing that crazy Nick Ramus in jail for pulling shotguns on his neighbors and refusing to judge Ramus's septic field using the same parameters they would use on yours.
And the same guy in county government, one Mr. Tom Pope, the one who keeps defending Ramus's septic system that uses his neighbor's land as his drainage field, is the same guy who the DA is now protecting from murder or manslaughter charges even though he shot and killed a teenager recently who he claimed was breaking into his house, though the boy was shot in the back.
This is the same Hays County that is so sure that the State of Texas is going to have plenty of road money for the next 20 years to pay us back millions for the upfront loan we made them to build state roads, many of which are simply speculative developer-desired road improvements.
The same Hays County government that lets Will Conley have his way with our money while he tries to convince an increasingly impoverished populace that the economy is just fine and dandy.
If anybody is positioning themselves for an election bid, it is young Mr. Conley, who lost the coin toss this past election to Jeff Barton for who got to run for County Judge, but has set his aim for the job next time around. I hear he is practicing up by impersonating Bert Cobb and doing Cobb the favor of doing his job for him. On the job training?
At least we don't have to worry about him being Commissioner for Precinct 3, oh, I meant, Road Boss, forever. Now, we simply have to worry about him using those bully boy tactics to hand the entire county over to the developers.
I am not foolishly defending anyone. I just stated the facts....something we all should focus on.
Was it foolish to assume the debt schedule the county posts on their website would be correct?
Was it irresponsible to clarify what caused a discrepancy when that cause is discovered?
Exposed, it seems to me you are intimidated by anyone raising questions and reluctant to accept that anyone other than those raising questions might make a mistake.
Anon at 7:40 AM says:
"Exposed, it seems to me you are intimidated by anyone raising questions and reluctant to accept that anyone other than those raising questions might make a mistake."
So all of a sudden I am "intimidated by anyone raising questions" because I am right about WatchOnGov jumping to paranoid conclusions when it was a simply government bureacracy?
Leave it up to the gullible and ignorant Tea Party types who cannot admit they have been duped to say someone is "intimidated" - when a writer is in fact pointing out the truth.
You, Al-Anon, should be less of a follower and more of an independent thinker - if you can.
Btw, I don't see Love-Joy defending herself with this fear misrepresentation here. Let's here from the source.
Exposed, What is a "simply government bureacracy"?
And no, your intimidation probably isn't anything that came on "all of a sudden"
I thought Bill Herzog was the county internal auditor NOT the budget financial officer. Why isn't anyone asking the budget financial officer about the numbers? How those numbers are interpreted, how they put the budget together? Asking the internal auditor isn't the right person to ask.
Are you suggesting the county did not have the most qualified person presenting the budget to the citizens of the county a couple weeks ago?
The County Auditor, Bill Herzog reviewed the county financial data in our presentation, and we spent a good few hours discussing it over several meetings. In all the time I was in his office he never indicated that FYE 2010 debt was not accurate, or that the spending plan had changed.
Also interesting is that Herzog broke from the standard accounting principles in which debt is totaled as a year-end number. In his presentation Herzog put 2010 year-end debt into the 2011 year. He moved 2011 projections to 2012, and 2012 to 2013.
Perhaps even worse is that I had to ask him 3 times in the Budget Workshop what the year-end 2010 debt was. First, he quoted me 2013 (actually 2012 projections), then some other number. The third time he gave me a calculation.
I can't figure out why this information seems to be so secret.
But it does seem like Public Hearings are in order if we want real answers to anything because the level of cross-examination required is significant. This is not open and honest government.
In any event, whether in 2011 or 2012, or 2013, we'll have that debt. If they haven't canceled any projects, the $400 million debt stands, at least until the next debt package comes.
We should also be discussing capital projects planning. There are many projects being discussed, and the public should be involved in the prioritization.
And to "Exposed"...
Lenee doesn't have to defend herself against nonsense comments from anonymous detractors. She signed her name to this article. Anonymous detractors should be so bold.
Post a Comment