Days after Channel 6 News broke the story that half of the city's $9.5-million shortfall this year comes from the Omaha Fire Department being over budget, there are concerns over whether changes made by the mayor to reign in spending will actually prevent the problem from happening again.

What's unusual is the fire department was already millions in the hole January first when the budget year began and we didn't hear about until 11-months later.

On Friday Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle told Channel 6: "[The fire department has] a history for decades of not staying in their budget."

The fire department is $4.7-million over budget. It's money the city has already paid out but didn't account for regarding comp time, sick and unused vacation time. For comp time, the city budgeted just $150,000 this year when the bill actually came to $2-million. Whether it was due to retirement or the economy firefighters cashed in what was earned in droves.

As we reported on Friday, Mayor Suttle has the fire department accountants now reporting to the finance department instead of the fire chief.

"It's surprise after surprise," says John S. McCollister, the executive director of The Platte Institute, a non-partisan think tank pushing for more limited government. "To centralize the accounting is a good thing. We don't want Enron-type accounting in Omaha. That's a change is very welcome."

But McCollister wonders that if it took 11-months into the year to find out the fire department's budget was so over-extended -- what else don't we know? "You wonder if there's a third increase coming down the road when it's time to pay 2008 wages and 2009 wages."

It seems many people were aware that these delayed payments were coming since they are in the contract but kept putting it off, hoping the economy would turn around and it didn't.

Fire Chief Mike McDonnell says, "We will continue to fulfill contract obligations as we are still negotiating for 2010. We will see how it affects that budget."

Sources say that unless some of the payouts have a clearer timeline in the contract the days of over extended budgets will continue. With 20-25 firefighters eligible to retire soon, next year's budget may account for that. But there's no way to know for sure what the number will be and how to account for it. That's how budgets work though.

This started with Mayor Mike Fahey's budget that was finished in August 2008. Mayor Suttle took over in June 2009. He hopes the new way of monitoring the fire department with weekly meetings between the finance director and fire chief helps reign in the budget.