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A clerical error overcompensated Cardinal Joint Fire District Chief Donald Hutchison
CANFIELD
A “clerical mix-up” is responsible for a $16,360 overpayment to Cardinal Joint Fire District Fire Chief Donald Hutchison, said Marie Cartwright, fire board member.
“In no way was this intentional,” Cartwright said. “It was an issue with our electronic payment system, and the chief has been paying it back ever since the mistake was caught.”
According to a news release issued by the state auditor’s office, during a review of Hutchison’s payroll records for 2014, auditors discovered Hutchison was compensated 26 pays, but each pay was calculated using the 24-pay amount.
“These overpayments should have set off a fiscal fire alarm for the district’s payroll personnel,” said Auditor of State Dave Yost.
Joe Sosnowski, fire board fiscal officer, said the issue occurred when the fire station staff switched to direct deposit.
“When we implemented direct deposit we found out the more often you do it, the higher the charge, so we switched to bimonthly. The bimonthly pay allows two extra pays per year and Hutchison’s was still being calculated as biweekly,” Sosnowski said.
This resulted in overpayments of $4,977, $5,608 and $5,775 in 2012, 2013 and 2014, respectively, the news release said.
Sosnoswki said Hutchison has already paid back a little more than $4,000 of the full amount.
At the April 25 meeting, the fire board formally approved a repayment plan for the remainder of the overpayment – $150 from each pay for a total of 110 pay periods.
The reason for the delay, Sosnowski said, was because the auditor the board was working with led the board to believe it couldn’t officially approve a repayment plan until the final audit was complete.
“Over the last month, we found out that wasn’t the case and formally adopted the plan soon after,” Sosnowski said.