In a called meeting on Monday, Dec. 22, Union County Sole Commissioner Harold Collins rounded out his first year in office by adopting the Fiscal Year 2026 Budget for Union County Government.
The current year budget through Dec. 31, 2025, was the last to be set by former commissioner Lamar Paris, making the FY 2026 Budget the first by Collins, who has decided to use a different budgeting methodology than many local governments, including the previous administration.
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Governmental finance is not the easiest of subjects to understand, featuring millions of dollars earmarked annually with special codes specifying funds and functions as enumerated in various accounting standards established by the state.
Collins campaigned on making the budgeting process more transparent while introducing potential cost-cutting measures with a “priority/zero-based” approach that requires close collaboration with departments to justify their budgets rather than, say, applying incremental increases based on inflation.
As a result, he has adopted a Government Fund Budget that balances revenues and expenditures at $33,643,883 for next year. The Government Fund serves as the county’s primary operating budget that pays for things like public safety, local elections, roadwork, recreation and much more.
County Finance Director Kay Wilcox explained that, because Collins was working with a new budgeting process this year, the Government Fund Budget remained more of a work in progress leading up to final adoption, with three iterations presented between Nov. 19 and Dec. 22.
She provided a 49-page line-item handout demonstrating the roughly $150,000 in differences from the budget draft presented in a Dec. 15 public hearing and the final budget Collins adopted last week.
The other county funds – Special Revenue, Enterprise and Capital Project – had no changes from the initial publication of the new budget.
As previously reported, the 2026 Government Fund appears to be about $5.5 million larger than the originally adopted FY25 budget. Helping explain the apparent massive difference is the fact that Collins changed many of the accounting structures as part of the new budgeting process.
For example, the FY26 Government Fund contains about $6 million that was accounted differently in previous years, including $3 million in health insurance costs and $3 million for the entire Recreation Department budget.
Together, these newly incorporated expenditures/revenues make the main operating budget seem substantially bigger than FY25, though the accounting is net zero, essentially providing a clearer picture of how government funds are being spent.
“I want to thank the entire Finance Department for their hard work related to this budget,” Collins said. “They have put in many long hours on the budget itself but also separating our accounts and funds for us to better show the public in 2026 where their tax dollars are being spent.
“I appreciate all the departments and their willingness to participate in the new budget process. All the department heads and elected officials started their budgets at zero and worked through all the expected expenses for the upcoming year to come up with their budget requests.
“I feel this provides a more accurate budget by showing exactly what departments need to operate cost-effectively and provide the same great services with no unnecessary spending.”
And now that the Finance Department has reworked the county’s budgeting procedures to match Collins’ professed desire for greater transparency, Wilcox said everything should go smoother in years to come since the “bones” of the “priority/zero-based” process are now in place.
“What we’ll have is the structure – the skeleton – which we did not have this year,” Wilcox said. “We’ll start with that with all the departments represented in the General Government budget, and then we’ll move forward from there. So, it will be much less complicated.”
Wilcox acknowledges that governmental accounting is not exactly easy to understand, though she does not believe people need to be “experts” to get their heads wrapped around it.
“What you do have to be able to do is differentiate between the types of government funds,” Wilcox said. “The General Government Fund is fairly straightforward; it’s what it costs the county to operate.
“When we look at General Government funds, whether the revenues come in or not, these bills have to be paid, so that’s why we budget so specifically for the General Government Fund.
“The other funds are Special Revenue funds – for instance, if something happened and the economy cratered and we got 50% of SPLOST, then the offset to that is that we would spend 50% less because we see how much is coming in over the year.
“So, if we don’t get the Special Revenue funds, if anything happens, we just don’t spend them. But with the General Government funds, we have responsibilities to employees and vendors and everything that it costs to operate the county.”
Only the media and government employees attended the Dec. 22 budget adoption, while around a dozen members of the general public went to the Dec. 15 budget public hearing, which the commissioner rescheduled from Dec. 2 due to a family emergency in the Finance Department.
Roughly half of those in attendance on Dec. 15 asked for clarification on the budget, and several attendees suggested that the Commissioner’s Office go further in its efforts to be transparent in explaining and presenting the county’s finances to the public.
Collins and Wilcox said residents are always welcome to call up or swing by the Commissioner’s Office to set up an appointment with the Finance Department to discuss various concerns or questions on county financials.
