County holds last budget board meeting
Jun. 14—A roundtable of local elected officials held their final county budget board meeting to approve Cleveland County's fiscal year 2021/2022 budget Monday.
The meeting ushered in the final closure of a board that held a line of fiscal transparency for some, but had been a bottleneck to efficiently conduct county business for others, The Transcript has reported. Despite a public protest, the Cleveland County Board of Commissioners (BOCC) voted in January to dissolve the board 2-1, with District 1 Rod Cleveland voting against.
The budget board allows all eight elected county officials to discuss their budgets each month and vote on a final budget for the county before the Excise Board later reviews and ratifies it. Effective July 1, 2021, the BOCC and the appointed, three-member excise board will review and approve the budget after departments present their budgets to those boards.
Notwithstanding the loss of the budget board, member and County Clerk Tammy Belinson said the new process would speed up some county business.
"The good news about this is that we will be able to do appropriations sooner," she said. "What we did with the budget board and the excise board and the appropriations and lapsed balances, transfers ... we can almost do those weekly since the governing board is now the county commissioners."
Despite the perks of timeliness, Belinson expressed regret over the loss of the budget board.
"I'm sad that this is our last meeting," Belinson said. Other officials did not respond to Belinson's comment nor offer their own as other business emerged from the agenda.
With the dissolution of the board effective June 30, committees created over the years like the employee benefits committee were in jeopardy and left to the discretion of the BOCC, some officials speculated in January.
Cleveland, who serves as vice chair of the employee benefits committee, asked that this committee continue. Board member and BOCC Chair District 2 Darry Stacy agreed to take it up as an action item for the BOCC.
Despite the loss of the board, Stacy said years of hard work to produce the county's good financial standing will continue.
"We as Cleveland County are in a healthy position and we are very frugal with the dollars we have," Stacy said. "Commissioners have put us in an excellent position for years. It wasn't anything specific we did when we came into office, but we continued the tradition of being very frugal and responsible with those dollars."
Stacy said he did not expect the trend in good fiscal stewardship to change with the dissolution of the budget board.
Mindy Wood covers City Hall news and notable court cases for The Transcript. Reach her at mwood@normantranscript.com or 405-416-4420.
