Facing budget shortfalls, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation dipped into its cash reserves to make ends meet for four years, leaving those reserves "greatly diminished," according to a state review released Tuesday.
The agency's reliance on savings coincided with several years when Gov. Bill Haslam required wide-ranging budget cuts. The TBI intentionally used its reserves to avoid layoffs and meet the required cuts without losing services.
During a meeting of the Senate Finance, Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday, state Comptroller Justin Wilson told lawmakers the makeshift system was "a real problem." The comptroller's report pointed out that two of TBI's reserve funds had been overdrawn in recent years.
Read more at our news partner's website, tennessean.com.