Oconee County will hold its first public hearing on the Fiscal Year 2015 budget tomorrow night, but county Finance Director Wes Geddings said on Friday no details of the budget will be released until after the public hearing is held.
Geddings refused to release a summary of budget requests from elected officials and county department heads or the amount of money he is projecting that will be available to meet those requests.
Analysis of raw documents I was able to obtain through an open records request shows that the county’s departments and elected officials have requested $3.3 million more for Fiscal Year 2015 than was budgeted for the current fiscal year.
The county transferred $627,636 from its reserve funds to balance the current budget, and it has used that procedure to balance the budget since the economic collapse of 2009.
The public hearing tomorrow night is the first chance citizens will have to see how the Board of Commissioners plans to balance the budget this year.
For more on the meeting and on the county's decision to withhold financial details until after the public hearing, go to Oconee County Observations.
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