Richland elections office tells County Council it needs more money now
The office that runs elections in Richland County expects to overspend its budget by about $1.2 million this year in the midst of a busy elections cycle, but county leaders haven’t decided whether they’re willing or able to give them extra money.
The Richland County Voter Registration and Elections office is asking Richland County Council to grant it twice as much money as was originally budgeted this year after being underfunded to start with, its director, Samuel Selph, told County Council members Tuesday.
Reimbursements of more than $952,000 from Columbia and other municipalities will be coming into the county to help make up the shortfall.
But if the elections office doesn’t get more funding from the county in the next few months, Selph said there would be ramifications. The office could have to forgo repairing and purchasing new motherboard batteries for voting machines, purchasing phones for its call center and four new printers to print absentee voting applications and voter registration cards, Selph told council members.
More than $1.2 million was granted to the elections and voter registration office in the county’s 2015-16 budget. That amount is far less than what the office originally requested from the county, Selph said.
Funding for elections and voter registration has never been higher, County Administrator Tony McDonald said. Even so, Selph said, for years, the office has been underfunded.
Selph’s office operates with $750,000 to $800,000 less than comparable county elections and voter registration departments in the state, he said.
“I’m asking for enough money to run this office,” Selph said.
Asked by council Chairman Torrey Rush what made this presidential election year different from the previous presidential election year, when less money was budgeted by the county for elections and voter registration operations, Selph referenced the November 2012 election debacle.
A shortage of voting machines in that election left voters waiting in lines for hours, with many people leaving the polls without casting votes.
“I don’t think we want to do that (again),” Selph said.
In addition to last November’s municipal elections in Columbia, Irmo and Blythewood, the county elections board is responsible for this month’s presidential primaries and June’s primaries and runoffs for local and state races in the current budget year, which ends June 30.
The municipalities repay the county for what is spent on their elections, but at least one has raised eyebrows at the amount it’s been asked to reimburse.
The city of Columbia was billed $147,481 by the county for its November 2015 election and run-off, more than $29,000 above what the city had budgeted for the elections. In a January letter to the city manager, City Clerk Erika Moore said she has asked Selph to review and reduce the number of non-mandatory support personnel hired to assist with elections in order to reduce costs for future elections.
State lawmakers, not County Council members, appoint the members of the election board.
But the county is responsible for the funding for the Board of Voter Registration and Elections. Reimbursements go to the county.
State Rep. Nathan Ballentine, R-Richland, said that given the “nightmare” of 2012’s election, “I have to believe (county leaders) know how important the elections are and that they can’t fail the voters again.”
County leaders have expressed concerns about demands by the Legislature that the county fund departments it doesn’t control without receiving adequate funding from the state to cover the rising costs of those mandates.
“It gets back to this interesting anomaly that we have where we have a department in the county that we pay for but we don’t control,” Councilman Greg Pearce said. “We don’t hire the director. We don’t fire the director. We don’t even set the salaries.
“Somewhere there’s a total disconnect between certain members of the Legislature and things they demand we pay for.”
Reach Ellis at (803) 771-8307.
Other county departments in need of extra money
Three other county departments also are trending toward budget shortfalls in this fiscal year, leaving the county with questions of how to pay for the additional dollars they’ll likely need before the year ends June 30.
The Sheriff’s Department Special Duty Office could exceed its budget by $215,000; the coroner’s office by $600,000; and the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center by $468,000, according to estimates by the county finance department.
The only way to make up for the shortfalls, said County Councilman Greg Pearce, is to dip into the county’s general fund savings account, which already has taken a recent hit to pay for emergency flood relief costs.
“There is no money other than the fund balance,” said Pearce, chairman of the council Administration and Finance Committee. “There’s not a department sitting around with a big surplus that we could steal it from. I wish there were.”
Council will discuss those deficits at a later date, members said.
This story was originally published February 24, 2016 at 4:07 PM with the headline "Richland elections office tells County Council it needs more money now."