County mishandles paychecks again

Monroe County may turn to an outside accounting firm for help after pay inaccuracies were found in some workers' paychecks for the third consecutive pay period.\nThe latest problem came Friday, when a software glitch partially overrode human calculations in employee paychecks issued Friday morning, causing some county employees to receive checks for the wrong amount of pay.\n"The employees are really unhappy things are not working," said Monroe County Commissioner Iris Kiesling.\nThe commissioners are now cooperating with the county council and the auditor's office as they look into hiring an independent accounting firm to help end the paycheck discrepancies.\nKiesling said officials want to hire BKD, a Missouri-based accounting firm that's one of the 10 biggest in the nation.\nCounty Auditor Sandy Newmann said Friday the county's electronic payroll system had reversed calculations made to federal tax withholdings, resulting in skewed paychecks.\nNewmann said the error in the latest checks affects only employees' Federal Insurance Contributions Act taxes, which include Social Security and Medicare.\n"Please accept my sincere apology and know that we are working hard to make this correction as soon as possible," Newmann said.\nIn an e-mail from the software vendor, Harris Software, technician Bill Ryerson said the mistake was made by the software. Essentially, the program took calculations that had been entered in by hand to correct problems from the first inaccurate pay period, and reversed them.\nNewmann said the errors in Friday's paychecks would only amount to a few dollars for those affected. She disputed rumors that some employees had paychecks that were off by as much as $50 to $100.\n"That's just not true," she said.\nBut every mistake is enough to cause a lack of faith in the auditor's office, some said.\n"We must do something to create a confidence again," said Monroe County Council member Marty Hawk. "Not just with the county employees, but also with the public."\nCounty council president Michael Woods said that although he doesn't depend on a county paycheck to live, he can understand why employees are fed up with the problems.\n"If being a county employee was my full-time job, and I depended on that check to live week to week, I can see how it would be frustrating," he said.