Judge admits double entry books on payroll claims

Discussion “tiptoed into the criminal...”

Waco – What started off as a discussion of a procedural error prompted District Attorney Abel Reyna to advise County Commissioners to seek the advice of their attorney.

In a dispute over accounting of a claim for compensatory hours worked by a departing clerk of Justice Court Pct. 7, Judge Jean Laster Boone freely admitted she and her chief clerk have been keeping double entry books in overtime hours accounted as “compensatory” time paid instead of overtime.

Records turned in to the payroll department showed that a departing employee had made a claim for a large number of hours worked in excess of 40 hours per week during her time as an employee.

But a separate record kept internally in the Court's payroll system showed she had worked many hours of overtime not turned in on payroll records at the time the pay period came to an end.

In an audio recording of the discussion, Commissioner Kelly Snell is clearly heard asking if it's not true that the employee – and the Judge – had both asserted in writing that the employee worked but 40 hours during the affected pay periods.

County Auditor Stan Chambers spoke up and said that now that the employee is leaving, she is seeking to be paid from her “compensatory bank.” Several members of the Court then remarked that the record reflects that the hours worked were 40, and 40 hours only. There is no other record to be had, other than one kept as a separate account, internally, in the Justice Court's records.

Judge Boone assured the Court that she and her staff will in the future use the county's payroll records system to keep track of the actual hours worked.

When questions from County Judge Jim Lewis, Commissioners Ben Perry, Kelly Snell and Joe Mashek showed that the judge and her staff had engaged in the double entry scheme, District Attorney Abel Reyna, who was visiting the Court in regard to another matter, stepped in. He advised them to seek the counsel of their attorney before proceeding any further.

A computerized 26-week payroll system rejected by the Court earlier this year was specially designed to prevent such discrepancies; had they stuck with the new system – one that had been paid for out of budgeted funds - it would have prevented any such misunderstanding, according to Mr. Chambers.

Under the system used at present, supervisors fill out time sheets; they and the employee countersign them, and the payroll department makes the payment.

Then the payroll clerks in the County Treasurer's office audit the records to make sure the payment is correct.

Under the system Mr. Chambers advocated, the audit would be done first, then the payment would have been made.

There are many suits in equity filed each year on the county's behalf to obtain judgments against employees who have been overpaid, he said at the time. Many of them go uncollected, though the County is obligated to pay attorneys' fees and court costs in an effort to recoup the losses in erroneous payments.

But the argument fell on deaf ears after employees of the Sheriff's Department and other staff members complained bitterly about the new “trust, but verify” accounting system. They said they would actually be paid less each year, though the diminishment would have been only the amount paid for each pay period for a 40 hour work week. The actual amount of yearly salary would have remained the same, aggregated over a year's time.

“I will be defending my system to the end,” said Mr. Chambers. “The system that I suggested would have given us a chance to audit first...

“The discussion had crossed over from a matter of a procedural error and kind of tiptoed into the criminal,” he added.

“Mr. Reyna put a stop to it, and he should have.”

To hear an audio recording of the remarks that led to Mr. Reyna's admonishment, one need only click the widget below: