Nebraska § 16-706 - Expenditures; how made; limitations; diversion of funds; violation; penalty; payment of judgments.

§ 16-706. Expenditures; how made; limitations; diversion of funds; violation; penalty; payment of judgments.

The mayor and city council of a city of the first class shall not have power to appropriate, issue, or draw any order or warrant on the city treasurer for money, unless the order or warrant has been appropriated or ordered by ordinance or the claim for the payment of which such order or warrant is issued has been allowed according to sections 16-726 to 16-729, and a fund has been provided in the adopted budget statement out of which such claim is payable. Any transfer or diversion of the money or credits from any of the funds to another fund or to a purpose other and different from that for which proposed, except as provided in section 16-721, shall render any city council member voting therefor or any officer of the city participating therein guilty of a misdemeanor, and any person shall, upon conviction thereof, be fined twenty-five dollars for each offense, together with costs of prosecution. Should any judgment be obtained against the city, the mayor and finance committee, with the sanction of the city council, may borrow a sufficient amount to pay the judgments, for a period of time not to extend beyond the close of the next fiscal year, which sum and interest thereon shall, in like manner, be added to the amount authorized to be raised in the general tax levy of the next year and embraced therein.

Where city has in its general funds sufficient unappropriated funds, it may use the same for the creation of a lighting system, if sanctioned by a majority of the electors, even where there was no provision therefor in the annual appropriation bill. Christensen v. City of Fremont, 45 Neb. 160, 63 N.W. 364 (1895).