Not lack of effort. Lack of resources. You can't claim that there is money there, and then go almost two years without making any additions. Well, you can, but you're either awful at your job or lying about money being there.
I'm not even sure what would be worse, management having lied about payroll space, or management having payroll space and still being too ineffective to acquire someone with more than a $3 million salary over the last 18 months.