By NICOLE CARTRETTE
Staff Writer

It didn’t happen overnight and it is not a problem the Columbus County administration expects to fix that quickly either.

County Manager Jim Varner told department heads recently to cut their remaining budgets by five percent immediately.

The directive comes on the heels of a letter from the North Carolina Local Government Commission (LGC) warning the county that the undesignated fund balance at roughly 13 percent is too low for a county the size of Columbus.

The county’s fund balance is lower than that of comparable counties in the state. Varner said the LGC would like to see a fund balance of 23 to 24 percent and the budget cuts are just the first step toward coming into compliance with the commission’s recommendation.

Varner wasn’t sure how much money the cuts would generate because definite figures for remaining balances in department budgets for March through June are not clear.

“Some of the money has been committed,” Varner said, pointing out some departments may not be able to actually cut five percent. “I know the departments will make every effort to comply with our request.

“We need to address this,” Varner said, indicating it would be approached over a three-year period.

With budget plans for next year just months away, Varner said he would recommend that the county reduce overall expenditures. “I’ve never had to do that; that’s going to be interesting.”

The LGC is an oversight committee for local government spending and debt. It was created by the state after the Great Depression when several local governments went bankrupt.

A county’s ability to borrow money is tied directly to the LGC, which must approve most local government bonds.

In late 2006, The News Reporter reported that Columbus County’s undesignated fund balance, unofficially at roughly $6.6 million, was at a seven-year low.

The state’s Local Government Commission suggests that a bare minimum 8 percent of the prior year’s expenditures be on hand; for Columbus Couny that is approximately $4.3 million.

While the county had a $2.3 million margin to work with in order to stay within the 8 percent, the fund balance available decreased by more than two million in 2005 and 2006.

In recent years, county government has pulled from the fund to balance the budget each year in June.

In 2003 the fund balance available totaled about $12.3 million. In 2004 it dropped to $11.3 and in 2005 it sank to $8.9 million, based on reported state treasury data.