By: Diane Benjamin
At the Council meeting last Monday night, one of the FOIA requests I mentioned Bloomington has ignored is $10,000 listed by them as “Loan To Employee To Create”. http://blnnews.com/2014/12/10/bloomington-wont-answer-mayor-transparency/ I filed a Freedom of Information Request last October for an explanation. Today I got an answer. (VERY late)
2 City of Bloomington employees have been overpaid. This account was set up to handle reimbursements by the employees. Why they were overpaid is not known. I think a good question to ask is how were the over payments were discovered? Both were discovered in 2013, but the repayment agreements were signed many months apart. That makes it unlikely that it was discovered during an audit of payroll.
I did received copies of the agreements signed by both employees with their names listed. I am redacting the names. One employee was paid $1946.89 more than he is required to pay back. It looks like his over-time rate was wrong – for more than 2 years. His base salary is now over $100,000 per year. The other employee has a base salary around $60,000 per year. His agreement was signed a month after the error was made, paying it back $20 at time seems silly. The other guy is paying $100 per check. No interest is listed for either employee.
A fortune is spent by the City on software. There is a saying in the computer world: garbage in garbage out. Somebody must have entered garbage. All the expensive software in the world won’t fix computer operators keying incorrect data. What internal controls are in place to handle payroll in the future?
Big question: How many other City employees are not being paid the correct amount? Are errors limited to employees? How about over-payments to vendors? Is the City handling your money the way you expect it to be handled?
One more question: Where is the integrity of the employees? Seriously, you didn’t realize you were overpaid? Below are the 2 signed agreements. 
Wonder if a woman in payroll lost her job over this. This is just the type of employee theft that I’m talkin’ ’bout: collusion. Tell me the person who was in charge of entering the hours and wage rates didn’t get a cut of this or in some way benefit. This fits in with unchecked computer permissions that allow any old employee to change billing amounts, erase fines, etc. The employees know that this activity is difficult and too time consuming to prove. And Management probably doesn’t really understand the old patchwork legacy software AND Management undoubtedly has to rely on what employees tell him of how it works. So, classic situation where labor has taken over. Powerless management . . . those are GOOD times, beyotches.
The head of HR retired with a full pension