County also fires payroll clerk for mistake
By Steve Herring
Published in News on October 16, 2014 1:46 PM
A second person has been fired in connection with a county payroll problem that stretches back at least 14 years and that will cost the county more than $76,600 to correct.
Sue Guy was fired last Thursday as Wayne County's human resources director for what County Manager George Wood said are "egregious" actions and an absolute failure to do her job.
And Monday, Linda Tipton, who had served as payroll supervisor under Mrs. Guy, also was fired.
The firings have nothing to do with a failed payroll plan that has since been abandoned, Wood said.
The problem is a flawed system that Wood said not only failed to pay a retirement benefit for some law enforcement officers, but failed as well to detect there was a problem.
State law requires the county to contribute to the Law Enforcement Officers' Benefits retirement fund, he said. Prudential, which runs the program for the state, requires that the county pay the money in on a monthly basis.
The issue was discovered in April by the Finance Department. If payroll had not been moved from Human Resources to the Finance Department, the problem could still be going on, Wood said.
The county traced the problem back to 2000 -- as far as its computer system would allow.
Wood, who has been with the county for just eight months, said he did not know why the system had been set up the way it had originally.
"I just know what the system should be," he said. "So then you go to who is responsible for benefits administration. Well, in our personnel policies, it is the HR director. So that was clearly her responsibility, and she didn't do it."
Wood said he understands that people make mistakes, particularly if they do not have a good system in place to begin with.
But there should have been an internal check to make sure that all bases were covered -- which would have brought the error to light, he said.
"Prudential issues a report on the court costs. Some percentage of court costs also goes to these folks' (law enforcement) accounts," Wood said. "So you can use that list from Prudential because they are saying, 'Here is who we have listed as in the system.'"
Those reports went to payroll every month, Wood said.
"Not only should it not have happened, if it had been periodically audited internally, it would have been caught a lot earlier. Then, the amount of the problem would have been significantly less."
Not only will the money have to be placed into the accounts, the county will have to pay any earned income as well, Wood said.
Prudential will tell the county what additional amount is owed for the missed earnings, he said.
There are 16 to 18 categories that require law enforcement certification for the employee to be eligible for the benefit, Wood said.
"So (HR and payroll) should have had a list that if you had anything dealing with one of these jobs classifications, they are eligible for the 5 percent separation allowance that goes into the 401K," Wood said. "That is how you would administer it.
"Then what should happen payroll should be keying it in based on these people who qualify for it and no one else. Apparently they just didn't have a good system for doing that because we have multiple, multiple, multiple cases. This is not like three or four cases. It is in excess of 50."
Wood does not think the county will face any sanctions or fines, but does not know for certain.
"But they obviously see we are making a good-faith effort to clean it up, and that is all you can do at this point," Wood said.
Most of the officers were enrolled correctly for the benefit, he said.
Mrs. Guy, who had worked with the county since July 23, 2003, has denied the allegations made by Wood in his termination letter to her.
She said she should not be held responsible for problems that happened before she joined the county or after payroll was removed from her office. She also questioned why the people now in charge were not fired.
"I am not holding (Mrs. Guy) accountable for stuff before she got here," Wood said. "I am holding her accountable for stuff during the dates she was here.
"Why would I take action against the people who found it? They were doing their job. They caught it. So I am not going to take action against them. I am going to thank them."