Opinion ID: 1200360
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The June 24, 1996 Resolution

Text: ¶ 8 The commissioners' June 24 resolution clearly became ineffective [21] when the budget board's process [22] had reached finality by ripening into an appropriation sans challenge from the commissioners. The responsibility to prevent the approved DA salary supplement from becoming final rested on the commissioners. The County Budget Act does not divest them  qua governing body of the county [23]  of standing to challenge the budget board's refusal to act in conformity to their resolution. By allowing the budget to reach the terminal stage and thus to be transformed, without protest, into an appropriation, [24] the commissioners' inaction permitted the budget board's will to prevail. It is the excise board's approval of the appropriation in contest that imparted to the supplement both its efficacy and finality. ¶ 9 The control over the county budget (1) passes ex lege from the budget board to the excise board when the conditions prescribed in 19 O.S.1991 §§ 1408-1413 are met, and (2) as soon as the provisions of 19 O.S.1991 §§ 1414-1416 are fulfilled, the budget is placed beyond the excise board's reach to become an appropriation. That appropriation, which at its final stage passed the excise board's scrutiny, must control over any discordant board of commissioners' resolutions which either preceded or followed the de jure budget's birth. For a detailed explanation of these critical stages, the reader is referred to the descriptive material in footnotes 22 and 24.