Be on alert for budget b.s.

It’s silly season again.

No, not an election: budgets.

Taxing entities across the county are developing their budgets for the coming fiscal year. With a vibrant economy and an increasingly rosy property tax picture (rosy if you’re collecting, not paying), these taxing entities should be forgiven if they’re salivating over the size of the public funding pie. Or should they?

The Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office drew some scrutiny recently by requesting six new Interceptor cars that, fully outfitted, will cost taxpayers roughly $360,000 total. While that request wouldn’t seem outlandish by itself, the fact that the KCSO was making its request while eight new cars have been sitting idle for months had some hands reaching for the penalty flag.

Sheriff Ben Wolfinger explained that the request isn’t as outrageous as it looks. The department is seriously backlogged in getting its existing cars outfitted, a job he said takes two people two weeks just to outfit a single car.

Still, county commissioners Chris Fillios and Marc Eberlein deserve credit for questioning the purchase request and holding off unless all questions can be answered and some solutions found. And it’s our strong recommendation that other pursestring holders in the public arena follow their example: Trust but verify. Scrutinize and minimize. Don’t build your churches for Easter Sunday, and so on.

This being silly season with bank accounts fattened at taxpayer expense, there’s no shortage of departments at many levels asking for more than they need. We wish we could say that in lean times, government departments are more considerate of the taxpaying public; that they apply strong discipline and whittle down their wish lists significantly. But for the most part, that’s not what we’ve seen over the years at all. Good times or bad, the temptation to gorge at the public trough is too tough to resist.

Knowing this phenomenon will probably never change, the only option is for elected and appointed officials, those paid and unpaid gatekeepers of the public’s trust and treasure, to separate the bull from the — well, the wheat from the chaff on budget requests.

Decision-makers, we know you’re getting pressure from employees to make their budget dreams come true. Please remember that for many taxpayers, those dreams are more like nightmares.