STATE CONTROLLER TO COMPLETE FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS REPORT
Auditor-Controller: ‘I will continue to do my job'
The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors narrowly passed a vote of “no confidence” in Auditor-Controller Karen Paz Dominguez during a special meeting Monday afternoon. Over the course of nearly three hours, supervisors, county department heads, and county employees delivered impassioned testimonies calling for an immediate resolution to ongoing “fiscal and fiduciary shortfalls” relating to the auditor-controller’s office.
Fourth District Supervisor and board Chair Virginia Bass, who brought the item to the board with 2nd District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell, said the vote was not about last week’s payroll debacle but was a response to “outstanding things that were supposed to be done that haven’t been done” over the past three years.
Bass added that the board had just learned of the State Controller’s Office’s plans to step in to help the county complete its final transactions report which was due in January.
“This year, after numerous communications from the state controller, we have yet to file the financial transactions report with them and there’s legislation that says that if an agency fails to comply with this reporting requirement that the state controller can both penalize the agency a fine of up to $5,000 and that they can come in and prepare that report on our behalf and then charge us for those services,” said County Administrative Officer Elishia Hayes.
Approximately half a dozen county employees called in to urge the board to pass a “no confidence” vote, one of whom said, “The county never should have let it get to this point.”
“I feel like it boils down to whether your board as a group is willing to acknowledge the true depths of the subsidiary
crisis. Respectfully, this isn’t politics, this is a house on fire. You all need to use every tool you have to get people to safety and put the fire out,” said Mary Ann Hansen, executive director of First 5 Humboldt. “If the tools you’ve used before haven’t worked, find new ones because every unpaid bill, late report, or late grant trickles down to impact Humboldt children and families.”
Humboldt County Department of Health & Human Services Social Services Deputy Branch Director Kelly Hampton and several others returned to the subject of last week’s payroll program.
“Since the start of the pandemic, we are experiencing more resignations than ever before. We have more staff leaving than I can recruit for,” she said. “…When there is this kind of conflict within county government, the jobs we have are not desirable. …The jobs we have are even less desirable when they’re stories about staff not receiving a paycheck.”
Following public comment, 3rd District Supervisor Mike Wilson noted that the “anxiety being expressed today is real”
but suggested the board continue the discussion next month with the auditor-controller present.
Bushnell asked Hayes to explain what a vote of “no confidence” would entail.
“In terms of the vote of ‘no confidence’, I think that this is really a testament to your board that you recognize that there are some serious deficiencies within our organization,” she said. “You’re also supporting the message that has been coming down from staff for a very long time that you hear them and you understand their concerns and you believe that there are challenges that, at this point in time, do not appear to be fixable through all of the means that we’ve tried in the past.”
Hayes noted that the county has brought in new staff for the auditor-controller’s office, called in outside consultants and experts, conducted leadership training, but nothing has worked.
“At this point in time, we’ve reached for every possible solution within our grasp to remedy the situation and we’ve been unsuccessful thus far. In my opin
ion, this vote of ‘no confidence’ is sort of that last resort that is available to your board in hopes that it may help to mitigate the current situation,” she said.
Fifth District Supervisor Steve Madrone maintained that “we’re all trying to focus on getting things fixed” and noted that last week’s payroll issue was not the fault of the auditor-controller as several county employees had insinuated.
“I would like for our CAO to explain what did happen with the payroll problems this weekend because as I understand it, there were a number of different problems that occurred across our systems and it was not simply some problem that the (auditor-controller’s office) created,” he said.
Hayes acknowledged that “there were multiple failures” that led to Friday’s delay in distributing direct deposit checks.
“The catalyst to the failure was a manual process in (DHHS) where a human is entering time into our finance system and an error occurred, or a special digit was populated, and that crashed the whole system and then we needed to go, basically, employee by employee to identify where that error was,” she explained. “But I’ll also say that payroll
has always been run on Wednesday and since it has moved over to the auditorcontroller’s office, it’s gotten later and later in the week, which leaves a whole lot less time for us to come together and troubleshoot.”
DHHS Executive Director Connie Beck said, “This is the first time that I’m hearing this, that’s very disappointing to me.”
“I would like to acknowledge that for my staff, especially the errors in the decimal and the amount of pay that happened afterward, was not the error of our payroll staff. I just want to make sure that that’s really clear,” Beck added. “We are and have always been willing to assist and make this payroll process transition as smooth as possible.”
Madrone also addressed accusations against Paz Dominguez “micromanaging” county departments.
“When you’re understaffed and other things are going on and our systems aren’t really designed very well that gums up the works,” he said. “…If you want to fault our auditorcontroller for something, you can fault her for trying to do her job way too good, but in doing it way too good it has delayed things that absolutely should have been done a long time ago.”
Later in the meeting, 1st District Supervisor Rex Bohn criticized the notion that Paz Dominguez was doing her job “way too god.”
“I wasn’t going to talk again but I’m now finding out that all our problems are because somebody is doing their job too good and we’re going to blame all the other payroll departments because they’re doing it manually,” Bohn said. “…I mean, we have a problem and it’s not because somebody is doing their job too good.”
While the board unanimously agreed that some sort of action must be taken to address the county’s fiscal crisis, the board did not agree on a path forward.
Wilson reiterated that casting a vote of “no confidence” was more of a statement than an action and expressed interest in continuing the discussion at the board’s next meeting on Dec. 7. Wilson made a motion to that effect and received a second from Madrone but it failed in a 2-3 vote.
Bushnell then made a motion to pass a “no confidence” resolution against the auditor-controller. Bohn seconded the motion. The motion passed in a 3-2 vote with Wilson and Madrone dissenting.
Paz Dominguez was notably absent during Monday’s discussion, although the clerk of the board said an invitation to the discussion had been sent to all department heads, including the auditor-controller.
Reached by email Tuesday morning, Paz Dominguez
told the Times-Standard she was “disappointed to hear that three out of five supervisors seem to have lost confidence in my work.”
“On the other hand, this was not news to me,” she added. “For my part, I will continue to do my best working for the public to ensure that the important programs that benefit children, seniors, and those in need in our community receive the funds they need. Like many county departments, we face serious staff shortages. Because we are a central service department within a decentralized organization serving all other county departments and special districts, the impact of us having less staff is more significant.”
While the State Controller’s Office coming in to complete the Final Transactions Report “is not the preferred scenario,” Paz Dominguez said “it is not as alarming as it is being suggested and is currently underway in other agencies across the state. I welcome their help and oversight.”
“The job of the Office of the Auditor-Controller is to ensure that the public’s money is spent as it should be and according to the contracts in place and the laws that are in effect,” she said. “I will continue to do my job.”