ROBINSON: COUNTY COMMISSION’S INFORMATION IS ‘SUSPECT’
The financial model used by the Platte County Commission as the foundation for its $408 million jail tax on the August ballot contains errors and does not address several critical matters, says Platte County Auditor Kevin Robinson.
The county’s proposal for a half cent sales tax to run for 20 years will be on the Aug. 6 election ballot. If approved, the estimated $408 million in generated revenue would make it the largest tax increase in the history of the County of Platte.
No other dedicated sales taxes in Platte County have ever run for more than 10 years.
Robinson said the information used by the county commission to develop the proposal is “incomplete” which makes it “suspect.”
“The effects on the pro forma from the assumptions and formula errors over 20 years reduces my level of confidence in the final conclusion used by the commission to propose ballot language,” Robinson answered to questions posed by The Landmark this week.
A financial pro forma is defined as a set of financial statements that predict an entity’s future performance.
One testing strategy used in his audit on the pro forma, identifying change or new revenues and expenses, has a significant variance of $140 million from the county commission’s numbers.
Robinson said his office was not asked to be involved in the development of the jail tax expansion projections used by the county commission determining ballot action. He says the author of the financial worksheet is unknown and the worksheet was reported as a collaborative effort with contributions from the county commission (Scott Fricker, Dagmar Wood and Joe Vanover), county administrator (Wes Minder) and the county commission’s financial advisor (Joey McLiney).
Robinson indicated his audit of the financial pro forma used in determining the proposed sales tax rate of half cent for the expansion of the current 180-bed existing jail to a new three-story 471-bed facility raises several questions.
One of the findings is that the pro forma shifts current expenses from existing taxes to the new tax, “freeing up funding currently provided by the general fund which creates an appearance of double taxation.”
“Nothing was provided that indicates what is anticipated if the pro forma accurately projected revenues. The pro forma evaluates revenues and expenses for a portion of the county, not in totality. This makes the information incomplete, it makes it suspect,” Robinson told The Landmark.
Robinson said if a plan had been presented to evaluate and based on performance into 2028 and 2029 to not renew the existing quarter cent law enforcement sales tax in 2030, the data would have had greater validity and would eliminate $130 million dollars in general fund revenue in years of 2030 to 2044.
Other problems in the county commission’s pro forma include inflating the projected jail population.
For instance, the pro forma projects inmate population of 480 in 2036. This is 59% percent higher than what the county’s own jail expert, Bill Garnos, has projected the county jail inmate population to be in 2036.
Garnos’ projected inmate number for the year 2036 is an average daily jail population of 301. That’s 179 inmates lower than what the county commission’s projection model lists.
Robinson’s audit notes that the “Garnos Inmate Population Trends and Projections report is the basis for projecting capacity requirements for the next 25 years.” Yet the inmate population projections listed in the pro forma are significantly overstated when compared to the Garnos’ report.
The county commission’s inflated jail population figure was used in the calculations of inmate medical care costs. Robinson said this results in significantly overstated expenses in that item by $16 million from 2028-2044.
Robinson said the audit of the pro forma determined the forecasting methodology, a combination of estimated jail population, 2024 budgeted expenses as a baseline, incremental annual increases and cost per inmate.
“The approach I agree with, some of the projections I don’t,” Robinson said.
A county commission-appointed group of citizens known as the Committee for Public Safety, whose purpose was to find and recommend solutions for inmate detention, recommended to the county commission that the county put forward either a quarter cent sales tax or 3/8th cent sales tax for 10 years. The committee’s report said nothing of including operational costs in a sales tax proposal and did not recommend a 20 year tax. A committee member recently told The Landmark that including operational costs in a sales tax proposal was never even discussed by the committee. “I was at every meeting. I would have remembered that,” said the committee member.
Getting access to the county commission’s pro forma information took some work, according to the auditor.
Robinson indicated that in the absence of his office being involved in the development of the jail tax expansion projections, he made several requests to obtain a reviewable copy of the financial pro forma. After no response to those requests, he forced the county’s hand on the public records by putting in an official Sunshine request for the information on Friday, May 31.
“It is appropriate to conduct an audit of the pro forma to evaluate accuracy and validity of the information used in determining the proposed sales tax rate for funding construction, renovations to the existing facility and daily operations through 2044,” the auditor said.
Robinson, who took office in 2011, said the auditor’s office has conducted numerous audits, including cash audits, contract compliance, purchasing and procedural. He said that he and his staff provide guidance to the county in developing the annual budget and assisting with financial forecasting.
In the development of the Law Enforcement Tax initiative in 2019, Gordon Cook and Robinson collaborated on the pro forma to ensure county operations were accurately reflected. Cook is a local financial consultant and was an appointed citizen to the special committee.
Cook’s conclusion after studying the county’s pro forma for the proposed half cent sales tax for 20 years is similar to that of the county auditor, and Cook has been even stronger in describing his analysis of the plan. In letters to the editor, Cook has described the county commission’s financial projections as “unreliable and embarrassing.”
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