Outside county officials warn about commissioner budget move

Mar. 7—Public officials outside Cleveland County are warning residents that the county commission's decision to dissolve a budget board could have lasting consequences.

Two weeks following the Cleveland County Commission's 2-1 decision to end the budget board, The Transcript spoke with several county elected officials and experts on budget and excise boards.

Critics of the commission's decision have said the move means fewer eyes on the budget and but others say oversight falls to an independent board whose members have no self interest in how county funds are spent — appointed members of the excise board.

One member is appointed from each commissioner district by the commission, the Oklahoma Tax Commission and the district judiciary who each appoint a candidate.

Cleveland County Excise Board members Larry Heikkila, Sid Porter and Bonnie Green declined to be interviewed regarding their reaction to the commission's decision.

Under a county budget board system, the responsibility of adopting the budget is spread out among all eight elected officials of the county. The board gathers monthly for discussion and each member has a vote to adopt the preliminary budget before it is subject to approval by the excise board, a training manual based on state law for county officials reads.

However, under the excise board system, the responsibility to create the budget shifts from all eight officials to three county commissioners according to state statute. Commissioners create the budget and submit it to the excise board for review and approval.

Gene Wallace, executive director of the Oklahoma Association of County Commissioners told The Transcript excise boards provide an "outsider" oversight and work well for many counties.

"They're very independent, in the sense that — at least in my experience — that these are independent businessmen who looked at the estimate of needs as required of excise boards to establish a budget and then they would ask the hard questions sometimes. 'Well, what are you going to do with this,' and 'why do you need this, why do you need more money? How many employees do you have?' I think without a doubt the budget board seems to work very, very well in the really heavily populated areas — the urban areas specifically, but I don't know that they have an inherent advantage, one over the other," Wallace said.

Cleveland County's population is 279,274 and is the third most populated county in the state behind Oklahoma and Tulsa Counties.

Oklahoma County Treasurer Butch Freeman is the longest serving county treasurer in the state since he was elected in 1993. The county has used a budget board since at least 1989, he recalled.

Freeman was adamant that an excise board system is not advisable for large counties.

"For a county the size of Cleveland County, Oklahoma County and Tulsa County it's a dramatic mistake for a very simple reason — eight eyes is better than a set of three eyes when it comes to the financial management of a county."

The role of a budget board was intended to be a safeguard following a statewide commissioner scandal in the 1970s when a third of commissioners in 77 counties were indicted or pleaded guilty to financial crimes.

County government training instructor and professor for Oklahoma State University Notie Lansford said there are additional statutory restrictions and regulations in place to better assure accountability and transparency.

"The county purchasing laws became very stringent compared to the past and are relatively more stringent on other governing bodies," he said. "I believe that was the biggest change — purchasing requirements as checks and balances on spending money. Another thing that came out of that was the right for counties to ask the citizens to vote for county sales tax. That had not existed prior."

Kingfisher County Commissioner Heath Dobrovolny for District 3 said to have a budget board would seem unnecessary for his rural county both because of existing transparency laws and the fact that their county elected officials meet regularly to discuss their budgets, he said.

"I feel like there's more than enough transparency and everything is open to the public," Dobrovolny said. "Any person can walk in off the street and request to look at any budget, any account at any time. I don't feel like there's any way we'd ever have financial corruption. Maybe that's because we're just a rural county. I just don't feel like there's any way to do it. We get audits regularly. We have the state auditor's here right now and they were here last year again. To say that there's less oversight moving away from a budget board — I don't know that that's accurate."

Like a budget board, each month county officers meet to discuss everything from equipment failures to personnel issues in Kingfisher County, Dobrovolny said.

Lansford said he does not issue an opinion on whether a budget board should be preferred for a county than an excise board system.

Despite the possibility of continuing dialogue, the absence of a budget board's ability to vote is the issue, critics say.

Tulsa County Treasurer John Fothergill told The Transcript when commissioners make the budget, there is room for retaliation and favoritism. Tulsa County uses a budget board.

"I've heard some nightmares in other counties when commissioners don't agree with the elected official and they don't have a budget board the commissioners can basically not give them any money and if the excise board goes with that, then there's nothing you can do as an elected official at that point," Fothergill said. "You have to fund your entire office off the cash account. It could lead to potential for conflicts and/or not funding an elected officials position just because there's a difference of opinion."

Mindy Wood covers City Hall news and notable court cases for The Transcript. Reach her at mwood@normantranscript.com or 405-416-4420.