Tift County, Georgia · Governmental Activities Only
FY2025 audited finances for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2025. Tift County publishes no adopted budget book, so every figure on this page comes from the county’s audited financial statements — the only budget numbers shown are the FY2025 original and final budgets inside the audit’s own budgetary comparison schedule. The county reports governmental activities only; it has no business-type or proprietary funds.
Source for all figures: Tift County, Georgia — Financial Statements (Annual Financial Report) for the Year Ended June 30, 2025, audited by Carr, Riggs & Ingram, LLC (unmodified opinions; report dated March 6, 2026), as filed on the MSRB’s EMMA system.
Total net position
$157,777,963
Up $16,919,369 during FY2025
Governmental fund balances
$71,667,224
Across all governmental funds
General Fund balance
$42,766,858
Unassigned $41,771,625 — 119% of General Fund expenditures
Governmental revenues (fund basis)
$61,000,831
FY2025, all governmental funds
Governmental expenditures (fund basis)
$55,069,761
FY2025, all governmental funds
County bonds & notes payable
$0
The county carries no bonded debt
Lease liability
$1,953,924
Vehicle and equipment leases
Net pension position
Asset of $276,620
Plan overfunded at the December 31, 2024 measurement date
Source: FY2025 audited financial statements (EMMA filing), statements of net position, activities, and governmental fund balances. No county OPEB amounts are reported in the audit.
Net position is the county’s residual worth on the accrual basis — everything it owns minus everything it owes. More than half is locked up in capital assets (land, buildings, roads, equipment) that cannot be spent.
| Component | Amount |
|---|---|
| Net investment in capital assets | $86,804,621 |
| Restricted — public safety | $1,785,691 |
| Restricted — victims assistance | $862,367 |
| Restricted — specific purposes | $22,824,659 |
| Restricted, total | $25,472,717 |
| Unrestricted | $45,500,625 |
| Total net position | $157,777,963 |
Source: FY2025 audited financial statements (EMMA filing), statement of net position.
Governmental fund balances are the spendable-side view of the county’s position. The two SPLOST funds together hold $21,898,276, all of it restricted to voter-approved capital projects.
| Fund | Fund balance, June 30, 2025 |
|---|---|
| General Fund | $42,766,858 |
| 2019 SPLOST | $18,172,036 |
| 2024 SPLOST | $3,726,240 |
| Nonmajor governmental funds | $7,002,090 |
| Total governmental fund balances | $71,667,224 |
The ARPA Fund is the county’s only deficit fund: it carries an unassigned deficit of $298,591, which sits inside the nonmajor total above.
Source: FY2025 audited financial statements (EMMA filing), governmental funds balance sheet.
FY2025 revenues on the governmental-fund (modified accrual) basis. Sales taxes are the county’s largest single source, ahead of property taxes; the General Fund column shows how much of each source flows through the county’s main operating fund.
| Source | All governmental funds | General Fund |
|---|---|---|
| Property taxes | $18,713,730 | $17,337,113 |
| Sales taxes | $20,958,753 | $8,022,101 |
| Selective sales & use taxes | $1,711,037 | $418,022 |
| Business taxes | $2,161,258 | $87,650 |
| Licenses & permits | $37,800 | — |
| Intergovernmental | $4,188,318 | $1,134,771 |
| Charges for services | $5,995,621 | $5,153,370 |
| Fines & forfeitures | $3,708,650 | $3,051,949 |
| Interest income | $2,426,919 | $1,672,173 |
| Rental income | $359,862 | — |
| Other | $738,883 | $288,073 |
| Total revenues | $61,000,831 | $37,562,884 |
Source: FY2025 audited financial statements (EMMA filing), statement of revenues, expenditures and changes in fund balances.
FY2025 expenditures on the governmental-fund basis. Public safety is the largest operating function; capital outlay and the intergovernmental line reflect the SPLOST program, which passes project money to the county’s cities.
| Function | Amount |
|---|---|
| General government | $6,825,468 |
| Court system | $4,766,878 |
| Public safety | $18,384,351 |
| Public works | $3,185,610 |
| Health & welfare | $19,291 |
| Recreation | $1,365,019 |
| Housing & development | $1,047,738 |
| Intergovernmental (SPLOST distributions) | $5,711,062 |
| Capital outlay | $12,811,589 |
| Debt service — principal | $873,805 |
| Debt service — interest | $78,950 |
| Total expenditures | $55,069,761 |
Why public works looks small here: on the fund basis, road construction runs through capital outlay and the SPLOST funds rather than the public works line. On the accrual basis, public works expense is $12,608,550, including depreciation.
Source: FY2025 audited financial statements (EMMA filing), governmental funds expenditure statement and statement of activities.
From the budgetary comparison schedule in the audit’s required supplementary information — the only budget figures published for the county. The budget was never amended during the year: original and final budgets are identical.
| General Fund | Original budget | Final budget | Actual |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenues | $38,113,814 | $38,113,814 | $37,562,884 |
| Expenditures | $37,370,052 | $37,370,052 | $35,012,670 |
Source: FY2025 audited financial statements (EMMA filing), General Fund budgetary comparison schedule (RSI). See the disclosure in Sources & Notes about the schedule’s printed variance lines.
Two voter-approved Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax programs are running at once. SPLOST distributions to the county’s cities are recorded as county expenditures.
Original referendum estimate: $60,700,000
Referendum estimate: $70,000,000 · first year of collections
Source: FY2025 audited financial statements (EMMA filing), SPLOST fund statements and schedule of projects.
County bonds payable: $0. County notes payable: $0. Tift County carries no bonded debt and no notes — its long-term obligations are leases, accrued leave, and its pension position.
| Obligation | Amount |
|---|---|
| Bonds payable | $0 |
| Notes payable | $0 |
| Lease liability (vehicle & equipment leases) | $1,953,924 |
| of which due within one year | $764,418 |
| Compensated absences | $995,366 |
| Net pension position | Asset of $276,620 |
The pension plan was overfunded at the December 31, 2024 measurement date: total pension liability of $58,479,146 against plan fiduciary net position of $58,755,766. No county OPEB amounts are reported.
Hospital debt guarantee (no amount stated). The county has guaranteed debt of the Tift County Hospital Authority, whose operations and debt service were transferred to Tift Regional Health System, Inc. The audit states that the guarantee exists but states no dollar amount, so none is shown here.
Debt of the Development Authority — a separate component unit — is not county debt; see Component Units below.
Source: FY2025 audited financial statements (EMMA filing), long-term liabilities and pension notes.
The auditors issued unmodified (clean) opinions on the financial statements and reported no material noncompliance. They also reported two material weaknesses in internal control — the most serious category of control finding — and both are repeat findings carried over from FY2024.
Finding IC 2025-001 · Repeat from FY2024
Several county departments do not have enough staff for proper segregation of duties — the basic safeguard that keeps one person from controlling a transaction end to end. Management concurs with the finding, citing the cost of additional hiring.
Finding IC 2025-002 · Repeat from FY2024
Custodial-fund bank transactions were not recorded in, or reconciled to, the general ledger; audit adjustments were required to correct the balances. Management concurs with the finding.
Source: FY2025 audited financial statements (EMMA filing), schedule of findings and responses.
These legally separate organizations are reported alongside the county in the audit because the county is accountable for them, but their money is not county money and their figures are never included in the county totals above.
| Component unit | Net position |
|---|---|
| Development Authority | $42,923,140 |
| Board of Health (audited by other auditors) | $2,655,685 |
| Public Library | $2,296,849 |
| Aggregate component-unit net position | $47,875,674 |
Component-unit debt is not county debt. The Development Authority carries $11,700,000 of bonds and $8,751,165 of notes. Those obligations belong to the Authority, not to Tift County.
Custodial funds are not county funds. At year-end the county held $4,776,583 in custodial funds for other agencies. That money passes through the county’s accounts but belongs to those agencies.
Source: FY2025 audited financial statements (EMMA filing), component-unit and fiduciary fund statements.
Source. Tift County, Georgia — Financial Statements (Annual Financial Report) for the Year Ended June 30, 2025, audited by Carr, Riggs & Ingram, LLC; unmodified opinions; report dated March 6, 2026. Official filing on the MSRB’s EMMA system: emma.msrb.org/P11931303.pdf. Every figure on this page was taken from that filing.
Audited figures only. The county publishes no adopted budget book. The only budget figures on this page are the FY2025 original and final budgets in the audit’s General Fund budgetary comparison schedule, labeled as such. No FY2026 figures appear anywhere on this page.
Budget-vs.-actual disclosure. The printed budgetary comparison schedule’s own summary variance lines are arithmetically wrong in the source document. This page therefore publishes the schedule’s budget, final, and actual columns without its variance lines; the variances quoted in the text were computed from those columns.
Statements over narrative. Where the audit’s MD&A narrative differs from its audited statements — in the split of net position, and in a $20,000 water-system figure — this page follows the audited statements.
Bases of accounting. Fund balances, revenues, and expenditures are on the governmental-fund (modified accrual) basis unless a section says otherwise; net position and the pension amounts are on the full accrual basis. The pension position is measured as of December 31, 2024.