A clean audit of the McLean County Mental Health and Public Safety Fund won't wipe away all the disagreements over how the county spends sales tax money shared by Bloomington and Normal.
McLean County Board Chair Elizabeth Johnston said the audit adequately captured what has been happening in the fund and that it shows expenditures happened appropriately. Johnston said as long as the contract continues between the City of Bloomington, Town of Normal and the county, the auditor believes the fund will remain able to meet contractual obligations for criminal justice records handling technology and mental health programs.
The audit does not clear up disagreements over what the county does with some of the shared tax money.
Johnston acknowledged there may still be disagreement about what happens with interest money generated by short-term investments of the money. The county has put interest income into the county general fund. Bloomington and Normal have asserted that should go to the mental health and public safety fund.
"We have asked the Attorney General what those options could be. We are still waiting to hear back on that. But that doesn't preclude us from having discussions on what options we might be able to pursue,” said Johnston.
Johnston said the state’s attorney’s request for clarification by the state attorney general came last spring.
Another bone of contention between the city/town and the county is whether the shared money should pay for all units of county government to replace a criminal justice record management system, or just some of them, as the city and town have argued.
"I still see that as one system that the intergovernmental agreement was meant to replace. As far as whether we need to continue that discussion, if they disagree with that statement, then I think we do need to have discussion."
Johnston said police officers on the ground must be able to access jail and court records from the field to save time and make decisions about potential arrests.
Complicating the cost-sharing discussion are the facts that all three governmental bodies have contracted with Axon to buy their own record management software and the county plans to abandon the previously purchased system from a vendor called Caliber when Axon is integrated.
“I would really love to be able to sit down and have the conversation about how we reintegrate it. Axon has promised integration; however, we've also been promised by other organizations like Caliber for that kind of integration for the services we're getting, and we're not seeing it come to fruition. Axon has not done this before, so we are a bit of a test case for them to do the integration,” said Johnston.
A third issue is whether the shared revenue should pay for certain jail correctional officer jobs. That hinges on how much time people in those positions spend on delivering mental health programming for jail inmates.
“When we decided to revamp the jail and to move to that more kind of living room model, the more open model, that when you do that, it requires additional staff that the county was not going to be able to support, and so that was part of the jail expansion was to have the additional staff members to run it efficiently and safely,” said Johnston.
Johnston said the last time representatives from all three local governmental bodies met to talk about the dispute was in June, and there are no meetings scheduled.
“We were hoping the audit would guide future conversations. So, I am looking forward to sitting down with them to have those discussions,” said Johnston.
4-H Fund
Just as there had been complaints about the scope of unspent shared sales tax money, some had given a side eye to accumulated balances in the fund that help pays for 4-H programming in McLean County. Johnston said the situations are not analogous.
She said a number of things delayed expenditures in the shared sales tax fund. In contrast the accumulated reservoir of 4-H money had a different cause.
“The large accumulation in the 4-H funds was driven by a couple of people who were on the board before. [A few years ago] 4-H took a huge hit when we cut their portion of our budget 90%. We went from $300,000 to $30,000,” said Johnston.
4-H uses money that they get from counties to get matching dollars from the state. Johnston said they run on different budget cycles which means it takes about 18 months to feel cuts.
“Because of the drag, we are just now trying to get them back up to their own solvency to make sure that they can continue programs. They are continuing to also recruit …They're not quite back to pre-COVID numbers, but they had a very robust class last year. I think they're looking forward to having quite a few students this year as well,” said Johnston.
Johnston said the county should look at the 4-H budget allocation with a scalpel and not a sledgehammer. Last year, the county bumped that budget item back up to $300,000.
“I would say they're getting to a stable footing now. They're on that recovery path from that large cut a couple of years ago, and that each year when we do our budget, we are trying to carefully measure what do they have and what do they need to be sustainable, because they also have contractual obligations with staff,” said Johnston.
