Payroll flip flop throws flustered junta for a loop

Kelly Snell standing alone to save dough

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” - Kurt Vonnegut

Six Shooter Junction – It's one of those governmental snafus that moves from a slow rolling boil to cooler periods, goes on and off the boil - then brews up into full-fledged feud material all over again.

It's all about the kind of Monday morning hassle bosses often face with their lower-paid, more economically challenged employees – the one about how they will have to learn to manage their money, he's not a bank, etc., etc. No, they can't have an advance on next week's pay. They have to work before they get paid, not get paid before they work, and all that jazz.

The pitiful thing is that it's got area business men scratching their heads and wondering how and why an organization like McLennan County needs to pay people for work they have not yet performed, overtime hours they may or may not have worked, and vacation and sick leave time they may or may not be eligible to collect.

A frustrated small business man named Eddie Pribyl spoke to the issue following the McLennan County Commissioners Court's suddenly slow motion decision to spend $58,000 to reverse a previous decision made during budget workshops over the Spring months to reverse a long-standing policy they already spent huge amounts of money to correct.

In May, the Court voted to go to a 26-week pay system after an expense of nearly a half million dollars to install the new software on a $6 million main frame computer.

That would have resulted in county employees who make less than $30,000 per year receiving an average of about $85 per pay day less than what they had been getting. Somehow, folks got the idea that meant they would be getting paid less.

It's not necessarily so; they would just be getting less on each check, but the same amount for the entire year. The problem is that it would cost the same amount of money to buy the new software solution to the old problem to try to alter the new old system – and the software engineers aren't really sure it would work, according to the Information Technology department head, Robert Wasson.

Under the new old system of a 24-week pay schedule, people are often overpaid in error, leave their employment with McLennan County before the Treasurer's office catches the mistake, and become the subject of court judgments to collect the money.

“I don't know of any other business that pays people for hours they haven't worked before the time keeper has a chance to verify they have worked them,” said Mr. Pribyl, who lives at McGregor while he operates his place of business in Waco.

He was one of a committee of three – the number of the classic junta - who meet private sector payrolls who went to a meeting with three of the members of the Court and the County Auditor back in July to try to hammer out a solution to what they saw as an alarming situation, this business of pay folks before they actually do the work for which they are paid.

At a meeting between Commissioners Kelly Snell and Ben Perry, with Precinct 3 Commissioner Joe Mashek listening in on a speaker phone and his Administrative Assistant Susan Nemmer in attendance, they extracted a promise that the majority would vote to keep the new system, one in which the time keeper in the County Treasurer's office gets a chance to look over the overtime, compensatory and vacation time claims, and verify the payroll before that office cuts the checks.

Under the old system, employees are paid for periods of anywhere from 14 to 19 days. In many cases, the end of the pay period falls on a weekend, and the time keeper does not get a chance to audit the time sheets until after the pay is disbursed.

Why not go to the new system?

“They kept telling us 'What you don't understand is that these county employees are taxpayers, too,” said Mr. Pribyl when reached for comment on the Court's Tuesday decision to pay Edoc Technologies, Inc., $20,000 to design a payroll system to account and calculate pay under the old system of a 24-week pay schedule.

In addition, they voted to pay a $31,500 maintenance schedule over the next seven years to maintain that new old system. The resulting price tag is in excess of $50,000.

Mr. Pribyl and his colleagues are incensed, burned up, and apoplectic because, he says, County Auditor Stan Chambers pointed out during the July meeting that the Attorney General has issued an opinion that it's not really legal to issue pay checks without first auditing time sheets.

Mr. Chambers is as puzzled as the business men.

“They need a system of time clocks for each employee to punch in at the barn or at the courthouse...The system could be activated by a personal code, no matter the location they are at when they punch in,” said Mr. Pribyl. Employees have complained repeatedly that they sometimes have to report to work at their stations at the precinct barns, sometimes at the Courthouse, and sometimes on the road to other assignments.

You can't get there from here, they say.

The businesss men say they're wrong. Tom Ramsey, who operates a temporary placement agency named Total Placement, is on record saying he and his employees are able to do just that on a daily basis while he verifies and audits their actual hours in advance of their pay days.

When the vote came on Tuesday, Commissioners Joe Mashek and Ben Perry changed their position and voted with County Judge Jim Lewis and Commissioner Lester Gibson for the new old system that will cost in excess of $50,000 to stay with the now old new system of paying overtime and sick leave, vacation and compensatory time - without first auditing the time sheets.

“We asked them, 'Do you run that operation, or do the employees run it?'” said Mr. Pribyl, speaking from his desk in a busy automotive location in suburban Waco.

Will he say it on camera?

“Let me get your number. I'll get back to you,” he replied.

Some days, the dragon wins.