Budget, finance committees discuss lawsuit payments
JACKSON, Tenn. — Thursday morning, the Madison County budget committee met with the Madison County financial management committee to discuss their low general fund balance.
“I think we have about $8 million, but that can fluctuate significantly, especially when you have $1.3 million lawsuits that we’re going to have to pay out,” said Madison County commissioner Mike Taylor, who serves on the county budget committee.
The county settled a $1.3 million lawsuit about overtime pay. $425,000 of that payout is due next week.
Finance director Karen Bell wanted to take a little money out of more than a dozen line items to make up the $425,000, but Sheriff John Mehr asked for all that money to come out of the jail.
“He wanted to take it from the jail because it’s easier to come back and say the jail is overpopulated at the end of the year, and I need this money back,” Taylor said.
The sheriff disagreed.
“The jail is where that came from. That 15 minutes before the shift came out of the jailers. It didn’t come out of the patrol division or SROs or any other division. It came from the jail,” Mehr said.
The finance committee voted move forward with Bell’s calculations, but that one argument carried into other problems with the sheriff’s budget.
“They’ve never made any effort in the budget to work to stay within that budget or to cut. You know these expenses are coming. You need to hold back somewhere and try to help out and pay for some of this. There’s just been absolutely no effort whatsoever in my opinion,” Taylor said.
“I would disagree with you,” Mehr said.
“Well show us. Show us,” Madison County Mayor Jimmy Harris said.
“We’ll show you our numbers,” Mehr said.
“You looked at the numbers. They’ve increased every year. You’ve gone over your budget most every year,” Harris said.
To save money, the finance committee made the suggestion to start consolidating departments that might be duplicated county-wide, such as the accounting department.
Another suggestion included a proposed wheel tax to cover funding concerns.
