Shoshone County facing potential budget crisis

WALLACE — Shoshone County officials are scrambling to address a potential budget shortfall for the next fiscal year.

According to board of commissioners chair David Dose, after weeks of reviews and feeling confident moving forward with approving their proposed $16.5 million county budget, it was brought to the attention of the commissioners that there was a roughly $3 million difference between proposed expenditures and anticipated revenue.

Dose isn't attaching blame because, at this point, no one seems to know where the actual problem is or where it began.

In 2022, the county budget was passed at approximately $15.5 million, which at the time was a 13% increase from the previous year’s budget. The hike was called for then in response to record inflation and to cover a 7% cost of living adjustment given to all county employees.

With the state deadline for fiscal year budget approval one week away, the county will need to take a proposed $16.5 million and whittle it down to $13.5 million in order to have a balanced annual budget they can legally pass.

The county commissioners have been busy over the past few days trying to figure out how the county landed in its current position. In the meantime, they tasked the leaders of the various courthouse departments to review their proposed budgets and see if there is anywhere they can trim.

For the past few years, property taxes have been increased at a rate of 3% annually, and even with those increases, the county has reportedly overspent in comparison to its revenue.

Looking at the problem from the surface, according to Dose, it appears the county overestimated expected revenues from its various revenue streams.

The board of commissioners is now looking for an auditor to do a deep dive into the county’s revenues and expenses to find out where everything went sideways.

“We have to find a long-term strategy,” Dose said. “We haven’t been paying for the right kind of audit, and we’ve been budgeting to spend more than we took in. We have to get to the bottom of this.”

It’s not all bad news though, Dose has assured the elected officials and department heads that there is some money available that can help the county through the storm, but it will not fix the problem.

“We’re going to use one-time money from some different county property sales and some budget cutting, and then there has to be an audit to determine what the county has been doing inappropriately or incorrectly and then we have a year to figure out a solution,” Dose said. “We’re not going to do any finger-pointing, that’s not going to help. It’d be very easy to blame people who aren’t here anymore or have been overseeing the budget, but what good would that do? We need to be in the business of problem-solving, not making political plays — because we’re all in a tough spot here.”

Dose, along with his fellow commissioners Jeff Zimmerman and Tracy Casady, are adamant that cutting wages or personnel needs to be a last resort, but it’s not necessarily off the table.

“Our people are invaluable,” Dose said. “Their experience and knowledge are not easily replaced.”

The Shoshone County Board of County Commissioners will be meeting with the elected officials and other department heads throughout the week as they move toward having a legal budget ready to be adopted by next Tuesday’s deadline.