IntroductionThis report continues the series started in 1991, when the General Appropriations Act required the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts to report on state expenditures by county.
Divided into two sections, Section I of the 2004 State Expenditures by County Report, includes a summary of net expenditures by county for major spending categories; a summary and ranking of net expenditures by county and a table detailing state expenditures by county. Section II provides similar information by council of government region. In both sections, some expenditures are listed as “unallocable” to Texas counties. Unallocable expenditures include payments made to out-of-state and out-of-country vendors and payments that cannot be assigned to a specific Texas county.
State agencies listed under each county and planning region are in numerical order, based on an assigned agency code. For reference, this report includes an alphabetical list of state agencies in Section I A. Section II A provides a list and a map of counties by state planning region.
This report limits state expenditures to net expenditures as reflected in the Uniform Statewide Accounting System. Net expenditures include purchases of goods and services. The net expenditures are limited to those made from accounts held by the Comptroller’s Treasury Operations and those in the state’s General Revenue Fund, all special funds and all trust funds. Funds handled outside the Treasury Operations’ accounting system, including those held by universities in local banks, are not included. Also excluded from net expenditures are purchases of investments; some payments from trust or suspense accounts, such as allocations of local sales tax to cities, counties and transit authorities; benefit payments to retired teachers and state employees and all types of interfund transfers and repayment of debt principal.
Generated from a cash accounting system, this report reflects only net expenditures made during fiscal 2004, from September 1, 2003 to August 31, 2004. Accrued expenses and encumbrances to counties continue to improve with each report period. Consequently, the data contained in this report may not be consistent with data from prior reports.
In some instances, a category may show a negative amount. This may indicate that a payment made in an earlier fiscal year has been wholly or partially refunded, or that a minor processing error has been corrected. Due to rounding, some category totals listed in the Introduction’s Major Spending Categories table may not match totals in the Summary of County Expenditures.
Major Spending CategoriesTables in this report list state expenditures in categories that generally parallel those used in the 2004 Annual Cash Report:
Intergovernmental Payments include grants to schools, colleges and local governments; allocations of mixed beverage taxes to cities and counties, and textbooks for public schools and distribution of Foundation School Program funds to local school districts.
Labor costs are salaries, wages, employee benefits payments, travel expenses and fees for professional consultant services. Also included is the state’s share of retirement contributions on behalf of state employees and public school teachers.
Public Assistance is composed of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Medicaid, grants-in-aid, child support payments and similar state services.
Highway Construction and Maintenance includes purchases of highway right-of-way and the expenses of constructing and maintaining the state’s roads and bridges. This differs from the 2004 Annual Cash Report that lists Maintenance and Repairs of Roads and Highways under Repairs and Maintenance. This report lists these expenditures under Highway Construction.
Operating Expenses are supplies, maintenance, utilities, rentals, leases, printing and non-capitalized equipment.
Capital Outlay expenditures include aircraft, computer equipment, land and buildings, major improvements to state property, motor vehicles and capitalized purchases of furniture and equipment.
Miscellaneous includes all other expenditures, such as court costs, fees, payment of claims and judgments, lottery payments and interest on debt.
Changes and Consolidations Affecting State Agencies in Fiscal 2004 and Fiscal 2005In 2003, H.B. 2292, 78th Legislature, Regular Session, consolidated 12 health and human services agencies in Texas. Affected agencies include the Texas Commission for the Blind (Agency 318), Department of Human Services (Agency 324), Texas Rehabilitation Commission (Agency 330), Texas Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (Agency 335), Texas Department on Aging (Agency 340), Texas Department of Health (Agency 501), Texas Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse (Agency 517), Health and Human Services Commission (529), Department of Protective and Regulatory Services (Agency 530), Interagency Council on Early Childhood Intervention (Agency 532), Texas Health Care Information Council (Agency 536) and Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation (Agency 655). The Health and Human Services Commission continued operations with the same agency name and number, but assumed new responsibilities. Starting February 1, 2004, the Department of Protective and Regulatory Services was renamed the Department of Family and Protective Services.
This report covers expenditures by county for state agency names and numbers used before the consolidation resulting from H.B. 2292, 78th Legislature. Future expenditure reports by county will reflect changes in agency names and numbers due to consolidations effective September 1, 2004. Starting with fiscal 2005, three new agencies were formed including the Department of State Health Services, the Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services and the Department of Aging and Disability Services. State expenditures by county for these new agencies will be included in the 2005 State Expenditures by County report.
Other Changes to State AgenciesThe 78th Legislature combined the functions of certain agencies. The Texas Aerospace Commission (Agency 354) and Texas Department of Economic Development (Agency 480) were transferred to Governor-Fiscal (Agency 300). The Research and Oversight Council on Workers’ Compensation (Agency 478) moved to the Department of Insurance (Agency 454) and functions of the Commission on Human Rights (Agency 344) were transferred to the Texas Workforce Commission (Agency 320). The Board of Vocational Nurse Examiners (Agency 511) combined with the Board of Nurse Examiners (Agency 506) and the Texas Commission on Private Security (Agency 467) was transferred to the Texas Department of Public Safety (Agency 405). The Texas Cooperative Extension (Agency 555) absorbed the responsibilities of the Texas Wildlife Damage Management Service (Agency 577); the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (Agency 582) assumed the duties of the Texas Council on Environmental Technology (Agency 369) and the Aircraft Pooling Board’s (Agency 342) functions were transferred to the Texas Department of Transportation (Agency 601). The Governor-Fiscal (Agency 300) performed close out activity for the Criminal Justice Policy Council.
Due to an accounting change, expenditures reflected for the Court Reporter Certification Board (Agency 204) are listed under the Office of Court Administration (Agency 212).
Adjustments to the Uniform Statewide Accounting SystemThe Uniform Statewide Accounting System (USAS) provided most of the data in this report. The Comptroller’s office uses a computerized accounting system, USAS, for reporting and controlling all expenditures for Texas state government. In a few instances, inconsistencies between automated accounting system’s requirements and the needs of an accurate report of state expenditures by county required an adjustment to the distribution of state expenditures to counties.
The Comptroller’s office takes expenditure data from USAS in the form of vouchers submitted by state agencies for payment of goods and services. Vouchers, which contain a citation of the legal authority for the payment, result in state warrants or checks—which can be an electronic transfer or a check—to the vendor of the goods or services. Vendors can be individuals, businesses, organizations or government entities.
The distribution of most state expenditures among the counties relies upon a computerized file that includes the name and mailing address of each vendor. USAS was designed to track accounting transactions, not to identify the location of expenditures. A vendor’s address may not consistently indicate where the purchased goods or services were delivered.
The Comptroller’s office makes adjustments to the underlying USAS data for large expenditure categories that, if not reallocated, would significantly misrepresent the distribution of state funds to counties. With USAS, for example, certain major expenditures, such as state employee benefit payments or public assistance may appear to be made only in Travis County since it is the headquarters for most state agencies. In this report, such payments including expenditures for insurance, retirement contributions and social security, are adjusted.
The Comptroller’s office reallocates unemployment compensation benefits to former state employees and insurance payments for current employees based upon a percentage of state employees in each county. Employee social security and retirement payments are allocated by a ratio of state employee salaries by county and by agency, based upon USAS data. State contributions to the Teacher Retirement System are allocated to counties based on where payments to retirees from the trust fund were made.
Each year, the Comptroller’s office uses information from selected state agencies to make adjustments to the data for this report. For fiscal 2004, the Texas Education Agency provided expenditure data on textbooks for public free schools. The Texas Department of Transportation provided information on highway construction and maintenance to more accurately allocate expenditures to the county in which the construction was performed. The Department of Human Services provided information on payments for TANF and for nursing home care that were used to make a proportional distribution by county. The Health and Human Services Commission provided information on Medicaid clients by county, which the Comptroller’s office used to adjust fee-for-service and managed care Medicaid expenditures. The Department of State Health Services’ payments for the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children were adjusted using a statewide distribution of the program’s client population.
The Attorney General’s office provided a county distribution of child support payments. The Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation supplied information used to reallocate to other counties certain large payments made to vendors in Travis County that provided home- and community-based services and intermediate care facilities for people with mental retardation to clients outside Travis County. The Texas Workforce Commission provided unemployment insurance benefit data by county and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice provided a file of payment data for private contract prison vendors by county.
Expenditures not allocated to counties are moved to “Expenditures Unallocable to Texas Counties.” For example, the Veteran Land Board’s (VLB) Housing Mortgage Program funds mortgages for qualified Texas Veterans. The VLB, through the General Land Office (GLO), purchases mortgages originated at lending institutions throughout Texas. However, many large lending institutions operating in Texas require loan purchase funds to flow through their out-of-state headquarters. One example includes the GLO’s payments made to Citimortgage in St. Louis, Missouri, for the purchase of loans for VLB’s Housing Mortgage Program. These transactions fall under Object Code 7392, Land Purchased for Resale/Housing Loans and are placed in the unallocable expenditures category. Also moved to this category were transactions made under Object Code 7830, Disbursement of Disproportionate Share Funds to State Hospitals and Object Code 7832, State Hospital Payments of State Matching Disproportionate Share Funds.
Smaller objects of expenditure have not been redistributed and may still be reflected in the county where payment was made, not in the county where goods or services were delivered.
