2010-07-30 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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MS. SAKO: Good morning everyone. I’m Deanna Sako. I’m the Deputy Director of Finance here at the County. I’m going to go over a couple of things today. I’ll be giving you a one-page handout entitled Boards and Commissions. This is basically what you as commissioners are entitled to. You can receive mileage from home to the place of the meeting, and we pay that at the IRS rate of 50 cents per mile. January, usually the rate changes and if it does then we’ll pay again the IRS rate.You’re entitled to per diem if you do travel inter island or out-of-state. Pretty much per diem is if you’re traveling off island overnight primarily. And also, it can be on the same island if you have to go to Kona. Or if you have an overnight meeting in Hilo, Kona members drive over or something like that. It does cover your meals, lodging, incidentals, while you’re on travel status. Cost can be claimed in addition to the per diem such as your airfare if you were going to Honolulu for a training session for example. But it has to be related to the conduct of official business. The hotel portion of the per diem is $50 for interisland and $85 for out-of-state. So, if there is anything in addition to that, you can also claim that as well, because it’s hard to find $50 hotel room on this island or Oahu actually. We computed in terms of quarter day periods starting from midnight, so if you leave at 7:00 a.m., that’s the part of day you’re in. Same day per diem just interisland travel is $20 and we do require original receipts. If you need to rent a car, the car rental shouldn’t exceed $75 a day, including the car rental expenses and parking. We do not allow people to take CDW or LDW because the county has a purchasing card that carries out insurance for us. And the rental has to be necessary and the cost reasonable and if people are traveling together, they should share a vehicle. If you eat a meal while on official business, we do need an itemized receipt for that. If you receive a per diem, then you cannot double dip and also get a meal reimbursement. We do not reimburse for alcohol purchases. Basically we do not purchase alcohol for any function, employee or board member. This is basically what you as commissioners are entitled to. I think Kathy, you have a budget set aside for them to cover any cost the commission might incur. Times are tight so don’t be too extravagant. MS. GARSON: I think our budget is only $3,000. I don’t think we’ll be taking any interisland trips. MS. SAKO: To kind of go over a little bit – the other thing you have is our Comprehensive Annual Finance Report which is basically our audited financial statements for last year, Fiscal Year 2009. We are on a June 30 fiscal year end, so fiscal year June 2010 just ended. I’m still waiting to hear who our new auditors are. The new CAFR won’t be out until December or so. But on page 54 in the CAFR, it does have kind of an outline of our annual budget process. Even though our fiscal year end is June 30, and our fiscal year starts on July 1, we actually start our budget process in September of each year, sometimes in August. And that’s kind of basically our budget kickoff meeting is to tell the departments what their goal is with their budget. Is it status quo like typically it is, or is it you need to reduce your budget like it’s been for the last few years because of the economy. The budget kick off meeting is really the Mayor’s opportunity to talk to his cabinet and the department, and let them know what their goal is. In a typical year, they would maintain a status quo budget. They would also be allowed inflationary increases. So if fuel prices are going up, we’d allow them to increase their fuel budget or if we knew there was a collective bargaining increase, then they would be allowed to put that in their budget. The last few years, they’ve been asked to reduce and reduce some more. Also as part of the budgeting process, they 5