The Henderson City Council’s finance committee did what it had to do Tuesday afternoon and moved along a request for additional money from the Vance County Board of Elections, but the city officials only scratched at the surface of the concerns stemming from the request.
Board of Elections Chairman James Kearney appeared to tell the Finance and Intergovernmental Relations Committee why his board ran over budget last fall and needs an extra $23,500 to get through the fiscal year that ends June 30. Its original budget was more than $127,250.
The county Board of Commissioners previously heard from Kearney and approved spending its share of the added election costs, $18,330, contingent on the city doing its part.
Under a contract the county and city signed in 1972, Henderson is responsible for 22 percent of the expenses of the Board of Elections, in addition to all costs related to the municipal elections held every two years. The city’s original share for the current fiscal year was $27,997; it is being asked to contribute an additional $5,170.
FAIR Chairman Bernard Alston and fellow council members John Wester, Mike Rainey, Lonnie Davis and Elissa Yount attended the midday meeting Tuesday. As Wester noted, the contract obligates the city to pay its share, so the session was more about gathering information than making a decision.
The full council is likely to take up a budget amendment at its meeting March 21.
The City Council typically signs off on the Board of Elections budget without any inquiry. It leaves the management of that mandated agency to County Manager Jerry Ayscue, who Kearney said keeps a tight rein on operations.
“We have followed the law,” Kearney said. “We have not been frivolous.”
A chart he distributed Tuesday showed that the elections office overran its budget by $16,000 on part-time salaries, $11,800 on supplies and materials, $2,600 on travel and training, and $400 on maintenance. Spotting the spending trend, the elections board squeezed out $7,300 savings elsewhere, much of it by not filling the position of assistant elections director, Kearney said.
He attributed the overruns to four main causes: the primary runoff in August, which, added to the primary and the general election, meant that Vance County had three elections last year; high voter interest, which produced more than 4,000 new voter registrations in the county; high candidate interest, which produced lengthy ballots in many variations for different precincts; and the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which required additional training, procedures and paperwork.
“Unfunded mandate,” Wester said about the federal law, and Kearney agreed.
The Board of Elections had to make extensive use of part-time workers to staff three early-voting sites instead of the previous one and to handle more than 4,000 early ballots, compared with about 1,500 four years earlier, Kearney said. That accounted for the salary overrun.
Ballot printing and preparation costs drove up the spending on supplies and materials, and HAVA requirements led to the extra training.
“We didn’t foresee what we were up against,” Kearney said. “When this election train starts down the track, you have to ride it to the end.”
Kearney also noted that the elections budget was $17,000 less than the board requested, and that amount combined with $10,000 the elections office didn’t spend in county appropriations last fiscal year would have just about covered the overruns.
Finance Director Traig Neal said that if historical trends hold this year, other jointly funded, county-administered programs should come in far enough under budget to more than cover the city’s additional election expenses. Those programs include the 911 office and the Interagency Drug Enforcement Unit.
Whether the city realizes those savings won’t be known until the end of the fiscal year, however, and Neal said the city did not get money back from those joint operations in the previous fiscal year, when a runoff in municipal elections drove up spending.
Assistant City Manager Mark Warren noted that Henderson recently received more than $6,000 from an old worker’s compensation insurance claim, and that money could cover the election expenses. Warren, however, has proposed using the money to allow the Code Enforcement Department to knock down more abandoned structures — without that funding or the collection of liens on other properties, the city can’t demolish any more dilapidated houses until July.
Kearney said he’s “reasonably sure” that the elections office will make it through the rest of the year with the additional $23,500. The only complication is the disputed election for state school superintendent, which still could be sent back to voters.
But Kearney couldn’t address the council’s bigger questions about the city’s role in paying county election expenses. And those questions are merely part of the overriding issue of how the city and county cooperate in areas ranging from the disposition of the armory to the operation of the new library to the inspection and condemnation of decaying buildings.
No one seems to know where the 22 percent figure for the city’s election expenses came from, and Alston and Wester wondered why the city should pay any portion of Board of Elections expenses that are tied to municipal elections. The elections office is a mandated county function, and, as Wester said, “100 percent of city residents are county residents.”
Wester said his bigger concern isn’t the operational costs but the capital costs. He doesn’t want the city to have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to help the county buy electronic voting machines as required under HAVA.
“That’s coming next year,” Kearney said.
Kearney and City Manager Eric Williams said they’ll check with the North Carolina League of Municipalities and the state Board of Elections on how other cities and counties handle voting costs.
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