We as citizens go about our daily lives and our work, trusting our county commissioners to manage our county efficiently. Most of us do not have the time, nor are we allowed to take time from work to attend all daytime commissioner meetings. Most of all we are not paid to do the commission’s work of managing. In Lawrence County SD all our commissioners are registered republicans. A republican is supposed to be conservative with spending. We should not have to oversee our commission but instead entrust them to not overspend. Many people are starting to notice our state legislature is not as conservative as we thought, but instead seem to spend as if they are socialists. For this reason, I decided to look into Lawrence County’s budget, actual revenues, and actual expenditures. I contacted 2 other counties of similar populations and revenues. Meade County being the largest populated of 30,689 citizens according to the US Census Bureau. Codington at 28,721 and Lawrence the smaller populated of 27,214. I looked at their 2022 budget, 2022 actual expenses, 2023 budget, and the current 2024 provisional budget. The Board will consider adoption of the budget at the September 26, 2023 meeting. When taking a quick look, the first thing I was looking for is departments that have increased significantly in budgeted expenses. Any decent business manager is going to look for departments with large increases and evaluate. The first thing I noticed was the Treasure department was a $119,166 increase from the 22 budget to the provisional budget of 2024 bringing it to over a quarter of a million dollars of a total provisional budget of $709,466. From the 22 actual expenditures this is approximately a 20% increase. This 2024 budget is $290,989 higher than Meade and $156,257 higher than Codington. The budgeted revenues for Meade for 2024 was a total of $23,802,788. Next was $20,740,235 for budgeted revenue for Codington. Lastly, Lawrence at the lowest of $18,857,488.
To acquire some of this financial information I contacted the Auditor. She kindly told me about the location on the county website where to locate this information. All of this information is listed in county financial reports and is not that time consuming to look up nor answer where to find these reports. It is the Auditor office’s duty. For some reason it put a bur under Commissioner/Senator Deibert’s saddle because I asked for this public information location. According to a witness at the Sept 5th meeting and according to the meeting minutes, Commissioner Deibert pointed out that recently there has been an information request for the Auditor on the budget. Deibert reiterated that the commission has a budget workshop that is part of the normal commission meeting where the board goes through every line item in the budget. Deibert pointed out that he did not see anyone at those meetings, and it is a labor stress to have these information requests after the fact when the commission has already had the public meetings. Deibert encouraged the public to attend these meetings if they want to engage and avoid duplicating labor efforts in our departments.
I have listed below the comparison charts I did for the Auditor office and the Commission. I found that the Auditors office also had a significant increase in budget. It too was higher than Meade by $180,086 and Codington by $149,550. I sent all these comparison charts to the e-mails of Auditor, Commissioners, and Deputy States Attorney. I also asked them what their reasoning was for Lawrence to be so much higher in costs for these departments compared to 2 similar counties. So far, I have had no response a week later.
Lastly according to Sept 5th, 2023 meeting, Deibert Moved and Flanagan seconded to add a one-time bonus to the Treasurer and Auditor in the amount of $7,500.00 each and the motion carried. According to two different witnesses at the meeting and according to the minutes there was no exclamation for these very large bonuses.
In summary, I’d recommend that the commission do a better job of not overspending and take a better look at every line item in the budget. That’s their job and not mine. I also think that they might want to inquire how these other counties with larger populations and revenue are operating more efficiently. In the meantime, the citizens like me will continue working so that we can pay the taxes that fund the Commissioner’s wages.
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