The Seward County Commissioners and other elected officials discussed concerns over supplemental wages paid to employees within the county attorney’s office.
A resolution that addressed the payments failed by a 2-2 vote at the board’s Nov. 27 meeting.
Board Chair Roger Glawatz said the resolution was recommended by a state auditor at an oral exit interview.
Read statements from other elected officials HERE.
According to the county’s labor distribution reports, which track hours and payroll, for the months of August and September, three of the county attorney’s employees were paid additional wages from grant funds and interlocal agreements.
The chief deputy county attorney and the deputy county attorney are two of those employees. Their salaries were set by a vote from the commissioners in January 2018 to be a percentage of the county attorney’s salary.
The chief deputy makes $76,200 each year, and the deputy makes $71,437.56.
Both earn money out of the county’s interlocal agreement with Crete for providing legal services. The chief deputy makes an additional $1,500 and the deputy makes another $1,350 each month from that agreement.
The third employee paid supplemental wages is the county’s diversion director. Her regular salary is $3,866.41/month.
She was also paid $500 out of the county’s truancy grant fund, $500 out of a grant fund for child support enforcement and $600 from a grant for legal support services—a total of $1,600 extra per month.
During a Dec. 3 phone interview, County Attorney Wendy Elston said the diversion director used to work with Butler County for these services, and when Seward County took over the program through an interlocal agreement, it paid her the same amount.
She also said child support enforcement payments include annual incentive moneys the county receives based on its efforts.
At the Nov. 27 meeting, Elston said work paid by grants is outside the regular 40-hour work week.
The hours for these grants were not logged in the county’s labor distribution report.
Elston said Dec. 3 her employees keep handwritten logs of their hours worked regarding grants. She said those were the office’s internal documents and not open to the public.
However, at the meeting, County Assessor Marilyn Hladky and County Treasurer Bob Dahms said the auditor did not find records of these hours.
Also, in September, the diversion director was paid $2,499.99 for personnel officials wages, which covered retroactive pay for the months of July and August.
With the total payment divided up, the diversion director was paid around $833/month for personnel officials wages.
The county attorney was appointed as the county’s personnel officer July 17 while the board postponed hiring a human resources director. Elston resigned as the personnel officer in November.
Elston said she herself did not receive extra pay for the personnel role.
Elston said these employees receive the supplemental payments in addition to their regular pay so they have a baseline wage in case the interlocals or grants are not renewed.
Elston also said the grants do not allow her to supplant wages. This means an employee’s regular wage cannot be taken away and replaced with grant funds.
During the Nov. 27 meeting, Elston said the auditors recommended a resolution regarding the supplemental payments. She added that the auditors did not say it was wrong to do these payments.
“It was just that they needed a paper trail,” Elston said, which she said is what the resolution accomplishes.
On Dec. 3, Elston said these payments were approved by the board whenever the annual interlocals were up for renewal and during the monthly claims and payroll.
“It’s just not in writing,” Elston said, adding that the auditors want something, like the resolution, that’s more concrete regarding the payments than the interlocal agreements.
On Nov. 30, Glawatz said he believed the resolution satisfied what the auditor asked for, which was an explanation of how the payments worked.
He said the auditor’s main concern was that the commissioners did not approve those payments. However, Glawatz said he believed by approving the grants and interlocal agreements, the board was also approving how the county attorney used those funds.
He said the grants and interlocal agreements allow for programs the county wouldn’t have otherwise.
Elston said Dec. 3 Seward County provides a diversion program, which is an alternative to putting someone through the justice system. She said going through the justice system would add costs to the court system, the probation system and the jail.
Butler and Jefferson counties sought Seward County for interlocal agreements to provide diversion programs in their areas, Elston said. They pay fees to Seward County to manage the programs.
She said this makes the grants and interlocal agreements intertwined. Because of the county’s work with interlocals, it has the means to apply for grants, which fund the work in multiple counties and supplement Seward County’s program.
She said Seward County could not provide diversion services to the extent it is now without these interlocal agreements and grants.
The payments from Butler and Jefferson counties, as well as the grants, reduce the financial burden on Seward County taxpayers, according to Elston.
“It’s expensive to run the programs,” Elston said. “It’s an extreme need.”
Diversion also includes the counties’ truancy programs, which Elston said are preventative programs that help children get to school.
During discussion of the resolution Nov. 27, Clerk of the District Court Jacque Stewart asked why the board was going to consider the resolution before the newly formed committee had a chance to work on the issue.
“Because it was highly recommended by the auditor,” Glawatz said.
This committee was formed after discussion of the county’s November claims, which included the supplemental payments and two vendor claims to county employees.
Glawatz said the committee will decide how the county handles these payments moving forward.
Commissioner Fleischman said the new committee does not change the need for the resolution. She said while the committee will pick what it wants to do in the future, the resolution covered the county’s bases.
Elston said she clarified with the auditor that this was the remedy for the supplemental payments.
Schweitzer also said the issue should first be reviewed by the new committee and said some past issues found by the auditor took more time to resolve.
Glawatz said the board is trying to resolve the issue in good faith and that the committee will decide how to make these payments more transparent in the future.
Stewart said the county has a grade and step plan that outlines how much employees are paid. She said the supplemental payments and the resolution bypass the county employee handbook, which has policies developed by the personnel board and approved by the commissioners.
“And it hasn’t even been discussed yet,” Stewart said, adding that the issue was only discussed in the auditor’s oral report, which was not open to the public.
According to the county’s wage and compensation practices, which were approved by the commissioners in June 2017, wage adjustments outside of annual increases require department heads to take certain steps.
First, if an employee’s responsibilities change significantly, wage adjustments must be based on an updated job description.
The human resources department will conduct a wage analysis with the new description and recommend where the updated position would fall in the county’s grade and step plan.
Last, the department head will propose these changes to the county board, which has final approval of the job description and updated wage.
Elston said Dec. 3 it’s hard to compare her employees’ positions with other counties to place them on the grade and step plan. She said most other counties don’t do interlocal agreements like Seward County and some don’t have diversion programs.
She also said the wage and compensation policies were adopted after her office began this practice.
amanda@sewardindependent.com
