Deadlines are not meant to be skid marks. The very name itself suggests if you cross the line, you die.

Unless you’re a government. Deadlines, apparently, are not meant for governments.

Government deadlines don’t really have much bite to them, let alone death.

A recent review of local government audits shows two of the three tax-levying authorities have pretty poor records for meeting their audit deadlines.

Adams County’s audit was only turned in on time once in the past 10 years.

Imagine if only 1 out of 10 of us paid our taxes on time.

The City of Natchez only met the deadline 50 percent of the time.

Only the Natchez-Adams School District has earned an A-plus by getting its audit completed on time each year for the past 10 years.

Apparently, late public audits are an epidemic across Mississippi.

County administrator Joe Murray suggests that for the 2014 year only three of the state’s 82 counties managed to turn their county audits in on time.

That’s a pretty sad statistic.

The problem is current state law seemingly only provides what amounts to a puppy’s bite of consequences when the deadlines are missed — counties can lose state and federal funding sources, albeit usually temporarily.

That happened to Adams County in 2012, but the punishment didn’t deter the county from continuing to miss their deadlines in subsequent years.

Late audits cause long delays in transparency that is vital to our system of government.

Further, they cause city and county leaders to build new budgets based on what may be inaccurate information.

Perhaps state lawmakers should consider passing a bill that prohibits the leaders of city and county governments from being paid their salaries when audits are overdue.

Maybe that would get their attention.