LAPEL — Overtime and fuel expenses have eaten away at the Lapel Police Department’s 2008 budget, but town officials have their hands tied when it comes to adding more money.

The department had spent 70 percent of its annual fuel budget as of June 30, but 2008 county budgets stalled in the approval process don’t allow Lapel Clerk-Treasurer Tom Tudor to make transfers to the critical areas from other budget line items, Tudor said.

“The problem is we don’t have an approved budget yet,” he said. “The county has not been able to certify the assessments. That is causing us an extreme challenge. I need to do additional appropriations, and I can’t.”

Tudor said he needed to take money from accounts in the police department’s budget that have an excess and place it into the fuel and overtime accounts. Although he doesn’t know when he will be able to do that without an approved 2008 budget, the department is not suffering from lack of funds.

“The police department is not in the red,” he said. “I’ve got monies that I could do an additional appropriation, but I can’t submit it (to the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance) because we have no budget.”

High fuel prices have caused the department to spend most of its fuel budget, with fuel costing more than $1 more on average than it did last year, said Lapel Police Chief Dennis Molina.

“We figured there would be some increase, but not $1.14 a gallon,” he said. “We’re paying 25 to 30 percent more than we budgeted.”

The department also has had to pay officers more overtime this year, as a high-profile court case forced many of them to testify in court. While they were gone, they were paid, and other officers had to be paid to replace them.

The subpoenaed officers testified in a case involving two men who burglarized and assaulted a woman to get OxyContin in October, Molina said.

Illness also led to more officers collecting overtime.

As the police department and town of Lapel get ready to make the 2009 budget, high fuel costs will be considered, but there isn’t much more the department could do to save money.

“It’s the course of doing business,” Molina said. “I guess we could stop arresting people.”

Without approved 2008 figures to go on, creating the 2009 budget will be tough, Tudor said.

“It’s really a challenge to run government when we don’t have an approved budget,” he said. “Department after department is in the same situation.”

All budgets in Madison County are almost six months behind the approval deadline of Feb. 15, according to the DLGF. Changing demands by the DLGF and the inability to meet them on the part of the county has caused the budget process to fall behind.