City workers giving back excess pay

By John w. Goodwin jr.

The Hubbard auditor says the mistake won’t happen again.

HUBBARD — The city has been reimbursed most of the money overpaid to some employees as the result of an accounting error, and it has implemented a new method of operation to prevent a repeat.

Auditor Michael Villano, Road Superintendent Paul Collins, Secretary Lorrie Brown, Mayor Arthur Magee and former Service Director Al Patrick were overpaid a combined $5,981, the equivalent of an extra paycheck for each person, in 2006.

Villano reimbursed the city with a check in June for his $1,661 overpayment. Patrick’s $622 overpayment was deducted from his final paycheck after leaving his position with the city at the end of 2008.

Magee, Collins and Brown elected to pay the money back to the city in installments of $100 to $200 a month. Brown has reimbursed the city for her $961 in extra pay. Magee still owes the city $524. Collins owes the city $261.

Villano said the overpayments were the result of a miscalculation. He said the overpaid officials have annual salaries, set by state statute, that must be adjusted for the number of paydays in the year. He said 2006 had 27 paydays instead of the usual 26, but the five employees’ checks were written as if there were the usual 26 paydays, essentially resulting in an extra paycheck.

The affected city employees agreed to the reimbursement plan in June.

Councilman Patton Gilliland, chairman of council’s finance committee, discovered the overpayment while looking over city finances in 2007. He sent the information to the state auditor’s office for confirmation and that led to the decision to allow the funds to be paid back in a lump sum or on an installment plan.

Gilliland said he is happy the mistake was realized and the money is being reimbursed to the city, but he questions why the miscalculation was not discovered sooner and what other things are going undetected.

“I feel someone should have been disciplined. I don’t know how nothing was done by management. How long has this been going on, and how much have we missed?” he said. “I hope this does not happen again. There is no new legislation we can pass; the law is already there.”

Villano said there is no need to look into any new legislation. He said the auditor’s office has put measures in place to make sure there are no future overpayments to any city employees.

“This year, five of us [in the auditor’s office] looked over the salaried individuals’ pay scale and signed off on it to perform the calculations independently of one another,” he said. “We know for a fact this year no one is getting anything extra. We have calculated it down to the last cent.”

jgoodwin@vindy.com