COEUR d'ALENE - The Kootenai County Auditor's Office revealed this week another failure with distributing tax revenue to county taxing districts, this time holding back nearly half a million dollars over four years.

"We should have sent it out sooner. For that, I take responsibility," said County Clerk Dan English. "The truth is, it fell through the cracks."

On account of an employee's oversight, English said, the county failed to distribute a total of $400,000 in yield and deferred taxes to 20 taxing districts from 2006 through 2009.

This is on top of the county's failure to distribute $1.4 million in property tax relief to districts last year.

"The crystal-clear explanation for me is those funds will be included in the distribution (of remittances) on Nov. 8," English said, referring to all the undistributed money.

The four-year lapse occurred without English knowing until a few weeks ago, he said.

He discovered that a staff member had foregone calculating yield and deferred tax distribution manually, and was instead waiting for a computer program to be updated to do the calculations automatically.

"He waited too long," English said. "Waiting multiple years is not acceptable."

English would not discuss the employee's penalty, he said, because it is a personnel issue.

Only 20 taxing districts were affected, as yield and deferred taxes aren't collected for all districts. Those impacted include all school, highway and fire districts, as well as county EMS.

The clerk's office has not yet calculated how much is owed to each district, English said. The districts were notified of the mistake on Friday.

None would have known the funds were missing, he added, as they are lumped in with other county remittances, just like the other $1.4 million that wasn't sent out last September.

English, who has been clerk since 1995 and is running for re-election on Tuesday, said he hopes to eventually provide districts with a clearer breakdown of the checks they receive so they can recognize when oversights occur.

"I'm going to check with the auditing staff to see if there's a better way to do a breakdown for better transparency," he said.

He added that remittances often contain taxes from years back, though, like when families catch up on missed payments.

"It's not just an exact pot. There's always some kind of mixture," he said.

English also plans to arrange a new system of checks and balances with the Treasurer's Office, he added, so the departments can keep an eye out for mistakes.

"I'm going to make it a high priority of mine so we don't have these kinds of shortcomings," English said. "I know how every dollar is important and should be coming to them (districts) in a timely manner."