Business men chide McLennan Court on payroll

Three area business men who have long met payrolls called the McLennan County Commissioners' Court to task earlier this week for approving a purchase "ratification" for $58,000 to return the newly purchased payroll system to a 24-week pay schedule.

The payroll system had been earlier set up on a system of 26 pay periods, something which Commissioner Lester Gibson said his lowest-paid employees found inconvenient because their checks would be an average of $85 less as a result. They would still make the same yearly salary, but their pay would be diminished by the adjustment. The Court had purchased the services of a software company to alter the system because of difficulty auditing the pay accounts for the accuracy of overtime claimed.

All three expressed outrage and said they were personally angered as taxpayers and business men, both by the methods used to account for pay amounts, and by the need to spend an additional $58,000 to fix a system that they say is not really broken.