There Has to be a Better Way

Curtiss Bryant

— 5 min read

Hope everyone had a great weekend.

Today, we are jumping into accounting. Fun!

Now, Accounting was my least favorite class in college. It might have something to do with the fact that it was my Monday, Wednesday, Friday class starting at 8am. Apparently I did not think that through too well. Who wants to crunch numbers and look at accounting documents at 8am after a weekend of fun?

In any case, that was my lowest college course grade. So let's just say accounting isn't really what gets my blood pumping. Sorry to all the accountants out there, but not exactly sure what you guys are thinking. Better you than me I guess.

Well, last month I received a batch of emails. In those emails was something called "Check Registrar". One of the commissioners had asked for this to be sent to them for some reason, so I was curious and opened it.

BTW, some of these are included in BOCC meetings. By law, these registrars have to be recorded in the minutes of a meeting. If you are browsing for them, it is under a section called "County Warrants".

I will preface this by saying that the county undergoes an audit every single year. This is done by a 3rd party and managed by the Clerk of Courts. The county has passed the audit every single year, so money is not being spent on things the county says it was not being spent on.

For October, this document is 27 pages of accounting. This is stuff nightmares are made of. Well maybe not too bad, but it is literally 27 pages with 89 lines on each page. The last page has 48 lines on it.

What is this exactly? Well it is every single transaction for the county in the month of October. It appears to be just about every single expense that the county has. There may be some other accounts that go on a different registrar, but this is likely most of them. By my math, there were 2,362 transactions in October alone, totaling $34,319,716.22.

You can see what it looks like here.

Literally, line after line of numbers. Fun stuff!

We talk about Florida DOGE or FAFO audits and all of that. A lot of people want Florida to come into Citrus County and tell us what we are wasting money on. This is likely where they will start. So as you can imagine, it will be a task and take some time. I wanted to dig into it a bit myself.

That is where I found the problem. There is no easy way to do this.

You see, when you look at line items, it gives the fund group (General Fund for instance) and then the budget code, the account code and vendor numbers. These are the indicators on what account the money is being taken out of and then applied to the vendor.

But there is no way to see what that expense is for.

For instance. 10/30/25 there is an expense for $1765.10 to Konica Minolta Business Solutions.

But what is that for? A quick search in the portal for the BOCC meetings does not show this contract that I can find. Which means it did not go to the BOCC for approval. But that is not a problem. The county has different purchasing rules. Not everything has to go to the BOCC before being approved.

Here are the purchasing rules.

So for this transaction coming out of Administrative Services, I assume this is for a lease for a copier or multiple copiers for that division. I assume it falls into the $10k - $35k category, so it does not require a bid, but does require quotes. I did a quick search on the bid portal for Citrus County and did not see copiers listed as a previous bid.

So how does one find the information on what is included in this purchase? I talked to the Budget Director after the last meeting and the answer is.... a public records request.

If I want information on this copier lease contract, I have to public records request it. Ok, not a big deal. However, what if I want information on the other 2361 transactions for that month? I have to public records request every single one of them? That seems like a nightmare for staff and for anyone wanting to look at this themselves.

In case you were wondering, this Konica Minolta Business Solutions comes up 34 times in this document for a grand total of $14,178.45 for the month.

These came out of the following Budget Units.

  • Administrative Services
  • Animal Services
  • Community Services Administration
  • Facilities Management
  • Ground Maintenance
  • Human Resources
  • Management and Budget
  • Parks
  • Systems Management
  • Veterans Service
  • Aquatic Plant Control
  • Libraries
  • Fire Training Center
  • Drug Court
  • Public Works Admin
  • Road Maintenance
  • Technical Services
  • Visitor and Convention Bureau
  • Landfill
  • Citrus County Utilities
  • Building Department
  • Benefit Plans

That is A LOT of transactions and no simple way to find out where the contract is or what the terms are, without doing a public records request. If each department has their own contract, then that is A LOT more work.

And that is just one vendor. There are hundreds of vendors. Some of them like the two payments to the Sheriff's Office for a total of $92,433.50 for "Personal Services" for the Animal Services budget item are easy to figure out. That would be salaries and what not for the animal control officers.

But the $13,051.86 for SurveyMonkey? What is that for? I did ask for this one in a records request, so will update when that comes in.

There has to be a better way for citizens to find this information if they wish to do so. I'm not sure of the logistics of this, but I wonder if there is a way to have these purchase orders and contracts online for things that do not come before the board.

As it is currently, it will be an impossible task for an individual to monitor all of this if they desired to do so.

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