quote:
So that's a problem. If you wouldn't have been spending when you didn't need to then you'd have that extra capital in your budget to get the extra things you needed the following year.

It doesn't work like that. Each department is given a budget. Let's say that budget is.... $100k and at the end of the year the department has only spent $50k. You are not going to get a $150k budget for the next year. Since your department only spent half of it's budget, it will be seen as that department doesn't need $100k and since they only spent half of it, they will only be given a $60k budget then the money that wasn't used will be applied to another department's budget.

The problem with that is, while only $50k was needed the past year, things come up and the following year more money might be needed so you have to show that you are using the budget you are given so that you will get the same amount the following year.

Part of the job in the department I was in, was to track down landowners of abundant properties. At the time the parish started to get aggressive with identifying properties that had mountains of trash, old crack houses (a lot of times an old person dies and have no family who lives close by so after awhile junkies would take over). We use to have to identify the property owner and if that person passed away then we had turn that property over to a lawyer so they go through the legal process of identifying a next of kin, etc so that game out of our budget.

It was in the middle of the year when they decided to start being aggressive on this so that year we didn't spend nearly as much money as we were going to need for the upcoming year.. So in order to make sure we had the budget to pay for the legal fees for all the properties that needed to be turned over to the lawyer, we had to spend it.. So we ended up getting new computers, etc just so that we could spend money to make sure we get the same budget for the following year.