DOH!!! Suffolk County Accidentally Misses A Debt Payment. Gets A Downgrade.

Uh oh.

Suffolk County technically went into default after we accidentally didn’t pay a $722.65 payment on one of our public bonds. Yes, you read that number correctly, that’s a three digit number.

The mistake was found by the Depository Trust Co. “The county informed M&T of its error, and the escrow agent immediately wired the $722.65 payment to DTC,” the regulatory filing said.

CNBC reported yesterday: What went wrong? According to Richard Tortora, president of Capmark Financial Group, the county’s financial adviser, Suffolk County was making the first payment in a complicated arrangement that uses $17 million in state HEAL grants for medical costs, primarily related to the Foley Nursing home.

Suffolk County’s financial problems are not pleasant. An independent task force predicted a three-year deficit of $530 million and we could have a budget shortfall of about $250 million by the end of 2014. Fitch Ratings has also downgraded Suffolk County’s general obligation bond rating to A from A-plus last month, affecting about $1.4 billion of debt.

And you thought YOU had financial troubles.

Hopefully Suffolk won’t forget to pay its bills again.