IntroductionThis report continues the annual reporting of state agency expenditures by county begun in 1991, when the General Appropriations Act required the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts to report state expenditures by county.
Two sections make up the 2005 State Expenditures by County Report. Section I provides a summary of net expenditures by county, excluding the purchases of investments, benefit payments, repayment of debt principal and interfund transfers. Section I also includes a ranking of net expenditures by county. Section II includes similar information by council of government region. In both sections, some expenditures are listed as “unallocable” to Texas counties. Unallocable expenditures include payments to out-of-state and out-of-country vendors and payments that cannot be assigned to a specific Texas county.
This report lists state agencies under each county and planning region in numerical order by an assigned agency code. As a reference, this report also includes an alphabetical list of state agencies in Section I A. Section II A starts with a map of counties in Texas followed by a list of counties by state planning region.
Only net expenditures as reflected in the Uniform Statewide Accounting System (USAS) are included in this report. Net expenditures include purchases of goods and services. Net expenditures are limited to those made from accounts held by the Comptroller of Public Accounts’ Treasury Operations, those in the state’s General Revenue Fund and all special funds and all trust funds. This report does not include funds maintained outside the Treasury Operations accounting system or funds held by universities in local banks. Net expenditures in this report exclude 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 repayments of debt principal.
This report presents net expenditures made from a cash accounting system during fiscal 2005, from September 1, 2004 to August 31, 2005. Methods used to allocate expenses and encumbrances to counties continue to improve each year. Because of the changes, the data contained in this report may not be consistent with data from reports from prior years.
In a few cases, an expenditure category may include a negative amount. This may indicate a payment made in a previous fiscal year that has been partially or wholly refunded; it may reflect a minor processing error that was 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 CategoriesThe tables in this report list state expenditures in major categories that parallel those used in the 2005 Annual Cash Report:
Intergovernmental Payments include grants to colleges, schools and local governments; distribution of Foundation School Program funds to local school districts; textbooks for public schools; and allocations of mixed-beverage taxes to cities and counties.
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 includes 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 rights of way and the expenses of constructing and maintaining the state’s roads and bridges. This differs from the 2005 Annual Cash Report, which 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, lottery winnings paid, payments of claims and judgments, fees and interest on debt. This category differs from the 2005 Annual Cash Report, which lists interest on protest payments and interest on refunds or credit of taxes or fees under Other Expenditures. This report lists these expenditures under Payment of Interest-Debt Service.
Total expenditures for Public Assistance payments and Travel differ between this report and the 2005 Annual Cash Report due to timing differences between accrual and cash basis accounting transactions.
Changes to State AgenciesThe 2003 Legislature’s House Bill 2292 consolidated health and human service agencies. The consolidation included 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 (Agency 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 name of Agency 530, the Department of Protective and Regulatory Services, changed to the Department of Family and Protective Services effective February 1, 2004. The Legislature gave the Health and Human Services Commission more responsibilities. H.B. 2292 also created three new agencies, the Department of State Health Services (Agency 537), Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services (Agency 538) and Department of Aging and Disability Services (Agency 539). These three agencies began operating on September 1, 2004.
The State Expenditures by County Report for fiscal 2005 includes the three new agencies and related financial closeout activities for the abolished agencies.
Other Changes Affecting State Agencies in fiscal 2005The 2003 Legislature combined the functions of a number or agencies. The Texas Aerospace Commission (Agency 354) and Texas Department of Economic Development (Agency 480) transferred to Governor-Fiscal (Agency 300). The Research and Oversight Council on Workers’ Compensation (Agency 478) moved to the Texas Department of Insurance (Agency 454). The Commission on Human Rights (Agency 344) transferred to the Texas Workforce Commission (Agency 320). The Board of Vocational Nurse Examiners (Agency 511) consolidated into the Board of Nurse Examiners (Agency 507) and the Texas Commission on Private Security (Agency 467) transferred to the Texas Department of Public Safety (Agency 405).
The Office of Court Administration (Agency 212) includes the fiscal 2005 activity for the Court Reporter Certification Board (Agency 204) due to a change in accounting.
Certain changes in financial activity for agencies listed in this report resulted from vetoed appropriations. This includes closeout activity for the Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund Board (Agency 367) that was performed by the Texas Workforce Commission (Agency 320). The Texas Cooperative Extension (Agency 555) absorbed the duties of the Texas Wildlife Damage Management Service (Agency 577). Duties of the Texas Council on Environmental Technology (Agency 369) were transferred to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (Agency 582). The duties of the Aircraft Pooling Board (Agency 342) were transferred to the Texas Department of Transportation (Agency 601) and the Governor-Fiscal (Agency 300) performed closeout activity for the Criminal Justice Policy Council (Agency 410).
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 USAS, a computerized accounting system, for controlling and reporting all expenditures for Texas state government. In several instances, inconsistencies between the accounting system’s requirements and the need for an accurate report of state expenditures by county required the Comptroller’s office to adjust 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 carry a citation of the legal authority for the payment, result in state checks or warrants—which can be an electronic transfer or a check—to the vendor of the goods or services. Vendors may be businesses, government entities, individuals or organizations.
The distribution of most state expenditures among the counties relies upon a computerized file with the name and mailing address of each vendor. Designed to track accounting transactions, USAS does not identify the location of expenditures. A vendor’s address may not accurately 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 misrepresent the distribution of state funds to counties. With USAS, 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 the fiscal 2005 State Expenditures by County Report, these 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 on a percentage of state employees in each county. Employee retirement and social security payments are allocated by a ratio of state employee salaries by county and by agency using 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 2005, the Texas Education Agency provided expenditure data on textbooks for public free schools. The Texas Department of Transportation provided information on highway construction, maintenance and rights of way to more accurately allocate expenditures to the county in which the construction was performed. 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 Comptroller’s office used data from the Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC), for Medicaid clients by county, to adjust fee-for-service and managed care Medicaid expenditures. Payment data by county for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) from HHSC were used to make a proportional distribution by county. The Department of Criminal Justice provided a list of vendors for each state-operated facility with amounts paid to out-of-state vendors. The Attorney General’s office supplied a list of the agency’s distribution of child support payments made to recipients in and out of the state. The Department of Aging and Disability Services provided data by county for payments made for Long Term Care nursing facilities and hospice care, Title XX Long Term Care/Non-Medicaid Services and Intermediate Care Facilities/Mental Retardation. The Texas Workforce Commission provided unemployment insurance benefit data by county and the Veterans’ Land Board supplied a file of expenditures made to counties for housing assistance and home improvement programs.
Expenditures not allocated to counties are moved to “Expenditures Unallocable to Texas Counties.” “Expenditures Unallocable to Texas Counties” includes payment transactions to businesses, individuals and vendors which cannot be matched to a Texas zip code through USAS. Examples of such transactions to individuals located outside the state include some labor costs such as lump-sum termination pay, state contributions for employee benefits such as employee insurance benefits payments and employee retirement pay. Certain Medical Services & Specialties payment transactions also go out of state, including payments to Superior Health Plan in St. Louis, Missouri and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. As in fiscal 2004, examples of unallocable expenditures include federal prescription drug services transactions, payments for other professional services to out-of-state reproduction and printing contractors, interest on state bonds, federal fund transfers to state hospitals that serve Medicaid-eligible individuals and supplementary medical insurance benefit payments.
In some cases, smaller objects of expenditure that have not been redistributed may be reflected in the county where payment was made, not in the county where the goods or services were delivered.
