How Judge Rob Kelly’s Budget Process Took Over $70 Million More Than The County Needed — and Then Claimed Deficits
by Jacob Wellnitz, Liberty In Action Board Member
There is a comfortable fiction told about Kerr County government. The county is cautious. Conservative. Responsible. It budgets carefully. It maintains reserves. It protects taxpayers from uncertainty. That narrative deserves to be tested, not repeated.
This analysis relies on audited revenue and expense totals from 2018 through 2024, drawn directly from the annual financial reports published on the Kerr County website in the Auditor’s section. It asks a simple question: did the county collect materially more than it needed to operate? The answer, based on those publicly available numbers, is yes.
From 2018 through 2024, Kerr County collected over $70 million more than it spent to operate county government. This is not a projection or campaign estimate but a straightforward calculation of total revenues minus total expenses. In a county of roughly 54,000 residents, that amounts to about $1,300 per person, or about $200 per resident per year.
When a government repeatedly takes more money than it needs and retains the difference rather than adjusting future collections, that is not neutral bookkeeping. It represents a transfer of resources from private citizens to government beyond operational necessity.
Many taxpayers will reasonably view that as theft of the taxpayer.
Under the leadership and budget authority of County Judge Rob Kelly, a system took root that normalized over-collection. The County Judge shapes budget assumptions and drives the fiscal posture of the court. Year after year, revenue exceeded expenses by millions of dollars. In 2018 alone, the surplus exceeded $16 million. In 2022, it exceeded $18 million. In 2024, it topped $10 million. This was not incidental. It was structural.
By the end of 2024, taxpayers had sent over $70 million beyond what county government actually required to function.
Government is not supposed to operate at a profit. A county exists to provide defined public services at the lowest necessary cost. When surplus becomes routine, government has drifted from its proper role.
That $70 million did not sit harmlessly in an account. It was taken from family budgets, small business cash flow, retirement savings, and household reserves. Money that could have circulated locally or strengthened individual stability was instead parked in county accounts. Families lost the opportunity to grow their own savings, the county accumulated cash and earned interest on balances that never needed to exist.
County cash on hand grew from roughly $12 million in 2013 to slightly under $44 million by 2024. Estimated reserves climbed into the mid-twenty-million-dollar range. Reserves did not fluctuate in response to emergencies. They expanded steadily.
Reserves are prudent. Unlimited accumulation is not. The Government Finance Officers Association recommends general fund reserves of no less than two months of regular operating expenditures; once balances exceed defined policy targets without clear justification, prudence gives way to accumulation without limit.
Kerr County under Judge Kelly never defined a meaningful ceiling. Instead the county continued to over budget and over-collect taxes.
Incremental budgeting ensured continued expansion. Previous year’s numbers became the baseline. Departments added increases. Budgets grew. Taxes were set to support those increases. Actual spending came in lower, and the excess rolled forward into reserves. The cycle repeated.
At the same time, county leadership publicly emphasized financial strain. Road projects were described as prohibitively expensive. Infrastructure was framed as unaffordable. Disaster recovery was portrayed as a threat to solvency. The message to taxpayers was clear: resources were scarce.
That message is difficult to reconcile with approximately $43 million in cash on hand and tens of millions more in reserves built into the budget.
The phrase “no-new-revenue” was often used to reassure the public, but households do not pay in rates. They pay in dollars. When property valuations rise, bills rise. Collections increase. Surpluses follow.
Leadership carries responsibility. The County Judge is not ceremonial. Under Rob Kelly’s tenure, the structure that produced more than $70 million in cumulative surplus remained intact and uncorrected.
A conservative fiscal posture would have treated repeated surplus as a warning. It would have reset spending assumptions, established firm reserve targets, and compressed tax rates once those targets were exceeded.
Instead, the system normalized extraction from the tax-payer.
The cost extends beyond the cumulutive surplus though. If almost $70 million had remained in private hands and been invested in a broad market index such as the S&P 500 between 2018 and 2024, compounding at historical long-term average returns near 9 to 10 percent, the combined principal and growth would likely exceed $130 million today.
The county did not merely deprive citizens of principal. It deprived them of the growth that principal could have generated in free hands. The loss was not only what was taken, but what that money could have become.
That additional wealth could have strengthened retirements, capitalized businesses, funded home improvements, or built household-level disaster resilience. Instead, it was redirected into government accounts.
This was not a one-time error. It was the predictable outcome of a budgeting culture that took more than it needed and never felt urgency to return the excess.
The deeper issue is culture.
Kerr County politics has operated within a tight circle of continuity. Judge Rob Kelly has publicly elevated Tom Jones as his preferred successor, and Jones has aligned Wayne Uecker as his chosen candidate for Precinct 1. None of the three have publicly committed to implementing zero-based or targeted budgeting, nor have they announced a structural change to the framework that produced the $70 million surplus.
By contrast, James Stewart, candidate for County Judge, and Clayson Lambert, candidate for Commissioner in Precinct 1, have publicly supported zero-based or targeted budgeting to reset baseline assumptions and require justification for spending rather than allowing automatic growth. The distinction in this race is structural: continuation of the current budgeting model, or a stated commitment to reform it.
This is not a question of personalities. It is a question of stated positions. If leadership continuity remains within the same policy network, the existing budgeting structure is likely to remain intact. If leadership changes to individuals who have publicly committed to structural reform, the budgeting framework itself would be subject to review.
Voters evaluating these candidates should understand that the difference is not rhetorical. It is procedural. It is about whether the current system continues as designed, or whether it is reopened for examination and restructuring.
This story is not merely about over $70 million taken from taxpayers. It is about whether Kerr County will continue under a self-reinforcing system that treats over-collection as success, or whether citizens will demand transparency, defined limits, and true fiscal restraint.
The people of Kerr County deserve transparent budgeting, defined reserve limits, and leadership committed to restoring government to its proper role: to serve, not to accumulate.
These figures demand answers and an independent review of how this occurred and why it was never corrected. Public money is not a revenue stream to be optimized but a trust to be guarded. As Frédéric Bastiat warned in The Law, when government exceeds its proper function, it becomes “legal plunder.” If over $70 million can be quietly taken in seven years, oversight has failed. Accountability ultimately rests with the voters. Early voting begins February 17th, with the final decision on March 3rd.
The facts are now on the table. The question is whether Kerr County accepts continued extraction or insists on structural reform and genuine accountability.
Liberty In Action has identified candidates who have publicly committed to investigating and correcting the over-collection outlined above. For information about recommended candidates, please consult the Liberty In Action voter guide.