SALEM — The agency that researches geologic hazards such as tsunamis and landslides in Oregon plans to ask the Legislature for an extra $800,000 from the state general fund to cover expenses through June 30.

The Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries discovered the shortfall this spring after the agency brought in accounting staff from other state agencies to answer some basic questions, such as how much money the agency brings in and how much it spends. The department also regulates mining and drilling for oil, gas and geothermal wells in Oregon.

The agency could go before a House-Senate budget subcommittee this week to request the additional funds, although a hearing had not been scheduled as of Monday afternoon.

In the meantime, the geology department has accumulated a tab with another state agency, the Department of Administrative Services, which is the landlord and payroll administrator for much of state government.

The Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries has a current two-year budget of $14.7 million, which translates to an average monthly budget of $612,500.

Matt Shelby, a spokesman for the agency, said at least two factors contributed to the shortfall: the agency’s reliance on federal money and other non-state funds to pay for much of its work, and an overestimate of the revenue it would raise from fees to review permit applications for surface mining, and oil, gas and geothermal well drilling.

The agency struggled to accurately forecast the revenue stream from federal grants and other sources, and it has not raised the application fees for resource extraction in a decade.

A draft report by the accounting team also attributed the problems to a lack of financial management expertise necessary to manage the complex grants the agency receives, as well as outmoded accounting and budget processes and the failure to fill key jobs within the agency due to budget constraints.

According to the report, the accounting team also asked the state’s chief information officer to consider conducting a review of the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries’ information technology needs, since the agency stores and shares a large amount of GIS data and might require better computer systems.

Larry Givens, chair of the geology department’s governing board, said he was not completely surprised to learn the agency was $800,000 short of funding in the final weeks of its two-year budget.

“I was and I was not,” Givens said Monday. Givens said he suspected there would be a shortfall since Interim State Geologist Ian P. Madin informed the governing board earlier this year that the agency had financial problems. In the past, employees who briefed the board on the agency’s budget said the outlook would improve after they received payments expected under various contracts.

“Long story short, when we would get (financial) reports, we were told we were waiting, the agency was waiting on funding to come in from contracts that were in place and were being worked on,” Givens said. “So at that point the board said, ‘OK, we understand,’ and we went with the information we had.”

The Department of Administrative Services will now set up a new accounting system that “modernizes what (Department of Geology and Mineral Industries’) business processes are like,” Givens said.

Shelby said the accounting team also verified that the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries has enough money in a fund where the agency keeps money provided by small surface mining operations as a security to ensure they will perform the required reclamation. Questions had arisen about whether the surface mining funds were misspent, because the agency did not separate the security money from other funds.

“So the money’s all there,” Shelby said, although he added that the accounting team continues to verify each individual deposit.