Craig Weinaug is fudging Douglas County’s books.

He’s doing it to make sure the county has enough money leftover each year to respond to the unexpected  whether it’s a dramatic drop in interest rates or a tornado ripping along U.S. Highway 59.

And with effects lingering from recession and continuing bad budget news pouring in from the Kansas Statehouse, Weinaug’s elected bosses don’t mind a bit.

Weinaug, the county administrator, says he purposefully underestimates critical revenue streams  such as receipts from sales taxes and mortgage taxes  by millions of dollars, so his operating budget anticipates no more than a $200,000 “balance forward.”

But the $200,000 total exists only on paper. In reality, Weinaug will carry $3.7 million in “leftover” money from this year’s budget into next year’s spending plan, so the county will be able to pay its bills no matter how bad things get  financially or otherwise.

“The scary part of it is there are so many variables out there that we don’t control  the biggest being what the state Legislature is going to do,” Weinaug told commissioners during budget hearings last week.

For next year, commissioners are busy reviewing a recommended $44 million budget that doesn’t cut any employees or eliminate any services despite warnings of dwindling state revenue and additional costs passed down from the Statehouse. The county’s property-tax rate is expected to decline slightly next year, by about enough to save the owner of a $150,000 home about $4.59.

The budget’s stability is a credit to financial foresight that isn’t always seen in government, Commissioner Bob Johnson said.

While some taxpayers may lament the idea that they effectively were “overcharged” $3.7 million this year, he said, the alternative would mean becoming embroiled in fights over budget cuts, fee increases and service declines that many people find not only unpalatable, but unacceptable.

“Which would we prefer  the situation we have here in Douglas County, or the situation we have in Topeka?” Johnson asked, alluding to the Legislature’s millions of dollars in budget cuts this year, and the likelihood of them continuing into next year. “Our goal is to slightly underestimate revenues and slightly overestimate expenses so we end in a surplus situation.”

Weinaug is counting on holding onto the surplus through next year, too.

Most of the county’s $3.7 million “cushion” will be retained through 2003 to hedge against the possibility of revenue declines, Weinaug said. He fears that state lawmakers, for example, will retain as much as $3 million in transfer funds that state law earmarks for county use.

In the just-past legislative session, lawmakers already dropped an unexpected $360,000 bill on the county by retaining reimbursement fees for tuition at community colleges  funds the county had been told to expect in its coffers. Another hit: The county’s own investments had been expected to gain $900,000, but that revenue dwindled to $300,000 as interest rates and markets plummeted.

Without the $3.7 million “cushion,” Weinaug said, the county would have been faced either with cutting services or boosting taxes to cover the difference.

“That’s why we do the things we do,” he said. “That’s why we underestimate some revenues.”