Coles County Sheriff Rankin – Under budget third year in a row.

Coles (ECWd) –

Sheriff Rankin’s first year in office had a budget in place from his predecessor.  Rankin is in the 4th year of his term, which means he has presented three budgets that he has operated under that are now audited.  During those three years, the numbers point to Rankin being under budget each and every year for those three years.

His three year total under budget is $247,971.00.

During the spring primary race for Sherriff in Coles County, it was clear those attempting to find fault with Sheriff Rankin were willing to spin any and all information in a fashion that they believed would hurt him politically. We reported on some of the misinformation, here and here.

One issue I think most people pay attention to is how a candidate manages the funding he is provided.  For those that don’t know, a Sheriff Budget is approved by the County Board.   In the article we published last spring, we covered two of the budget years where Rankin was the one who submitted it.  We captured that information for this article and now include his third budget from 2017.  These are audited numbers and compared directly to the previous three years.

For the fiscal year ending 2015, the following are under budget numbers from the filed audit with the state. (See figures starting on page 30 of the pdf, 24 of the audit pages)

• Public Safety total under budget – $27,367.00
• Security total under budget – $6,415.00
• Corrections total under budget $29,769
• Total under budget for 2015 – $63,551.00

For the fiscal year ending 2016, the following are under budget numbers from the filed audit with the state. (See figures starting on page 30 of the pdf, 24 of the audit pages)

• Public Safety total under budget – $88,431.00
• Security total under budget – $15,045.00
• Corrections total under budget -$58,206.00
• Total under budget for 2016 – $161,168.00

For the fiscal year ending 2017, the following are budget numbers from the filed audit with the state. (See figures starting on page 30 of the pdf, 24 of the audit pages)

• Public Safety total over budget – ($125,599.00)
• Security total under budget – $5,138.00.00
• Corrections total under budget -$52,614.00
• County Sheriff Restricted Accounts under budget -$91,099.00*
• Total under budget for 2017 – $23,252.00

(* – County Sheriff Restricted Accounts were mixed with Public Safety in previous years.)

Now with fully audited numbers filed with the Comptroller, the public can see for themselves what the real Sheriff Budget numbers are, rather than getting political snippets of misinformation from political hacks and local media.  Political hacks are what I call those running for office that only share information that makes them sound or look good while ignoring facts that disprove their propaganda.

With this kind of under budget numbers, we can only wonder if this is how the County Board is funding their illegal contracts and employee who gets paid for not working that we covered in this article.

Sheriff Rankin, we say thank you for being a good steward of the taxpayer’s money.

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