As Fredonia village officials struggle to whittle down a 65.3% tax levy increase, it’s interesting to note the village was also found not to be in fiscal stress in a state Comptroller’s Office review of village budgets released last week.

We’ve said before that we think the Fiscal Stress Monitoring System is flawed, particularly when looking at Jamestown’s finances in the past. We still think the system is flawed, but perhaps the biggest flaw is that local governments have to submit paperwork to the state in order to be included in the rankings.

Fredonia didn’t do that in time this year, so its finances weren’t included in this year’s analysis of statewide village finances. It joins a list of roughly 20% of governments statewide that haven’t filed the required financial paperwork to be included in the Comptroller’s Office’s State Fiscal Monitoring System.

In our opinion, there had better be a good reason for such financial reporting not to be filed on time – or at all, in some cases. Also not filing financial reports to the comptroller’s office are Bemus Point, which last filed in 2015.

The last year Fredonia filed the required paperwork was 2023. The village wasn’t listed in any of Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s fiscal stress categories that year. We have no way of knowing whether or not DiNapoli’s monitoring system would have provided earlier warning that Fredonia residents were looking at a budget mess like the one they’re staring at now, but we’ll never know because village officials haven’t complied with filing requirements.

Local governments are statutorily required to file an Annual Financial Report with the Comptroller’s Office following the close of their fiscal year. In total, 108 local governments did not file their data in time to receive a Fiscal Stress Monitoring System score, a date that is at least three months past their statutory filing deadline. DiNapoli said non-filers comprise 20% of the local governments evaluated for this cycle of stress monitoring representing more than 482,000 New Yorkers.

What good is an early warning system that can be so easily thwarted? We all know the answer to that question.