Executive Director's Report - Volume 52, Number 3 - 2008

How big is BIG?

The July/August issue of California Counties, the official magazine of the California State Association of Counties, contained an article in which there was listed the revenue and expenditures of each county in the state.

It was an eye-opening experience to glance through the list and discover the incredible amount of revenue expended. The numbers that caught my attention the most were those that revealed the expenditures of Los Angeles County. For the 2005-06 fiscal year, the county’s expenditures were $11,696,722,235.

Yes, that is $11.7 billion...with a “B.”

That amount of expenditures gains relevance only when compared to something. For example, the combined Education and General Fund Budgets adopted by the Alabama Legislature for the fiscal year 2008-09 totaled just over $8.3 billion.

The total expenditures by Jefferson County, Ala. (the largest county in the state in terms of revenue and expenditures) for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2006, were just under $800 million. All counties in Alabama expended only about $2.4 billion during that year.

It is grossly unfair to compare Alabama counties, or the entire state for that matter, to Los Angeles County because there really is no comparison. The county has a population of more than 10 million. It is basically a combined city and county government, and it provides a host of services most counties in Alabama do not even think about.

Is there a point to this discussion? Not really. It is just an interesting comparison. We really do not know what big government is.

The Alabama Department of Examiners of Public Accounts publishes annually a report titled, Financial Statements – All Counties. This report, among other information, reveals the total expenditures by counties for recent fiscal years.

Listed below are the total expenditures for all counties in the state for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2006. Readers should understand that amounts listed are not based on audited information.

The entire report can be found at the Web site for the Examiners of Public Accounts at www.examiners.alabama.gov.

N/A = Data not available

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