Opinion ID: 1200360
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The January 21, 1997 Resolution

Text: ¶ 10 The commissioners' January 21, 1997 resolution is as ineffective as that of 24 June 1996. It came too late to affect the completed budget process, which by then stood transmuted by operation of law from a de facto into de jure appropriation. Whatever residue of budget authority the commissioners may claim to have retained under the County Budget Act, their exercise of that power, when interposed too late, cannot effectively interfere with a completed budget process. To allow that process to be undone by an act of the commissioners, taken after the terminal stage, would subject to utter chaos the entire fiscal function of the county. We will not assume that the county's decision to come under the budget act was ever intended to transform an otherwise stable and orderly process into a series of chaotic stages that lack orderly framework. In short, when as here, the budget is allowed to arrive at that terminal point at which it ripens  ex lege and sans challenge  into an effective appropriation, it is to be treated as having passed beyond the reach of the commissioners' authority.