Was Citizen's A&B Advisory Board Really Abolished For Recommending Biometric Time Clocks To Stop Existing Payroll Fraud ?
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Should Port Orange continue like the good old days, or modernize its employee time keeping systems?
What’s Your opinion?
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to: Manager Harden,
Your exchange with Hank Springer below is troubling for several reasons.
1) If Mr. Griffith did nothing wrong in the Administrative Leave scandal then on what basis was he ” required to give back to the City approximately $27,000 worth of sick and vacation leave ” and why should this City imposed ‘requirement’ be considered anything beyond extortion absent a determination of wrong doing on Mr. Griffith’s part ?
2) What specific procedures has the City implemented since the Administrative Leave scandal such that the same payroll theft that occurred then ( with supervisors recording themselves and other exempt employees present and on the job when indeed they were not on the job ) would be detected today ??
3) Does your administration have any intention of implementing the use of biometric time clocks as recommended by the now defunct Audit and Budget Advisory Board to deter if not prevent any such future payroll theft by exempt employees, which recommendation Council in typical Port Orange fashion shuffled off to a Classification & Compensation Study by Cody & Associates that was recently released absent any reference to the use of such time clocks by exempt employees.
Thank you
Ted Noftall
for responsible government – 2016
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From: Henry Springer [mailto:poimages@outlook.com]
Sent: Saturday, April 11, 2015 2:20 PM
To: Harden, David
Cc: Green, Allen; Bob Ford; Rivera, Cynthia; Kennedy, Dennis; Burnette, Don; Drew Bastian; Hank Springer; Roberts, Margaret; Stiltner, Scott
Subject: Fraudulent payroll time cards
Good day Mr. Harden
Cc to Port Orange city council.
From Hank Springer
The following is an excerpt from a comment on https://port-orange.us/freddie-takes-the-5th/ regarding Fred Griffith
…The $ 33,000 they ‘ pegged ‘ him with stealing through fraudulent payroll time cards is what he was referring to when he said answering questions the last time cost him $ 27,000…
- Was Mr.Griffith charged in any way of maintaining fraudulent payroll time cards? Since the Administrative Leave which had to be repaid was granted and approved by the department head, none of the employees who received it were charged with any wrongdoing.
- Did Mr.Griffith somehow lose $27,000 because of the investigation about the fraudulent payroll time cards? Mr. Griffith was required to give back to the City approximately $27,000 worth of sick and vacation leave. He was treated the same as all other employees who had been given and used such leave.
Thank you. hank springer
From Hank Springer
386 852 3178
poimages@outlook.com
www.popdradiolog.com
to: Ted Noftall
The Agreement, Waiver and Release signed by those employees who paid back 2/3 of the administrative leave they had received states in part:
“The City has discovered an amount of administrative leave granted for certain employees without City Council or City Manager authorization which took place over a twelve (12) year span from approximately 2000-2012. The employee, through no fault of his/her own, was a benefactor of this unauthorized grant of administrative leave.”
I have previously been told by labor attorneys that keeping detailed records of time worked by exempt employees can result in the Wage and Hour Division of the Federal Department of Labor determining that the employees were not, in practise, exempt and the City would have to retroactively pay overtime for hours worked in excess of 40 in any one week. A Wage and Hour Division fact sheet states that, subject to certain exceptions, “an exempt employee must receive the full salary for any week in which the employee performs any work, regardless of the number of days or hours worked.”
When it comes to preventing unauthorized leave by exempt employees, senior management has to pay attention to what is going on around them. By senior management I mean the City Manager, Assistant City Manager and department heads. We frequently interact with exempt employees and must ask questions when we notice an unexplained absence.
Mr. Harden may not have been completely candid with his statement: “I have previously been told by labor attorneys that keeping detailed records of time worked by exempt employees can result in the Wage and Hour Division of the Federal Department of Labor determining that the employees were not, in practise, exempt ”
The above seems more like a rumor than a fact. He does not support his concerns with any real events Other than under special circumstances the Labor department has never ruled that salaried employees must be paid extra for recording their presence on the job !
In addition prior to becoming a salaried employee the employee can sign a agreement that he fully understands “as a salaried employee he/she will receive the full salary for any week in which the employee performs any work, regardless of the number of days or hours worked.”