Stick to the Budget

It only took a week for the Ventura County Board of Supervisors to be tested on its newfound resolve not to approve any additional spending while it seeks to erase a projected $5-million deficit.

The supervisors passed that test, for now. They must continue to stand firm in the face of other temptations to waiver from the county’s financial plan, which will surely come.

At the very next meeting after the supervisors agreed to stick to the budget, Behavioral Health Director David Gudeman showed up to ask for $385,000 to hire extra nurses to review billing records for accuracy.

That’s exactly the sort of outside-the-budget-box appropriation that upsets the balance of the county’s financial planning. And the habit of department heads cutting side deals with the board outside the formal budgeting process is one of the practices highlighted by short-term Chief Administrative Officer David L. Baker as reasons why the county is facing organizational and financial problems.

Gudeman and his boss, Health Care Director Pierre Durand, made a persuasive case that the board should bend its rules in this case. This unbudgeted one-time expense, they argued, was only necessary to cope with ongoing audits set off by the county’s ill-fated merger of mental health bureaucracies. That action by the board got the Behavioral Health Department into this mess, Gudeman and Durand reasoned, and so the board rather than the department’s budget should bear the cost.

The supervisors showed commendable backbone, at least for now. They did authorize Gudeman to spend the money but told him to cover that expense by cutting elsewhere within his own budget. Supervisor Frank Schillo suggested that some of the money could be transferred from the Human Services Agency. The supervisors agreed to consider that proposal, and others, at a budget-cutting workshop set for January.

Week after week, county department heads appear before the board to request special consideration--a few thousand for this, a few thousand for that. They nearly always have compelling reasons why busting the budget is the right thing to do. Saying no isn’t always easy but it is something the board is going to have to do more consistently.

Like any plan, the county budget process loses its effectiveness when too many variances, exceptions and improvisations are allowed. Sticking to the budget is the right thing to do, and the right time to start is now.