County payroll will stay under auditor’s office

Gonzales County commissioners voted unanimously to keep payroll functions within County Auditor Becky Weston’s office at their Monday, April 8 meeting instead of consolidating them with the newly created human resources (HR) department.

Last month, the court voted unanimously to move HR out from Weston’s office as a separate department that would answer to the commissioners due to concerns raised by County Judge Pat Davis and County Attorney Paul Watkins about having HR in the same office as payroll.

On Monday, Davis told commissioners that action taken by the court in 2017, according to court minutes, had shown the court voted unanimously seven years ago to “implement a Department of Human Resources to include payroll, health insurance and employee benefits.”

“The way it's written here, from my understanding, payroll will still be under HR at this time, so do you want to leave it (in the auditor’s office) or do you want to move it?” Davis asked. “Whatever the case may be, we would have to take some action.”

At some point after 2017, the HR department — which included payroll — and accounts receivable were moved into the auditor’s office, Weston told the court.

Precinct 3 Commissioner Kevin La Fleur said he has concerns about moving both payroll and HR into the same office together out from under Weston’s oversight.

“When we had this like this before, without anybody overseeing and just one person, we ran into a bunch of problems,” La Fleur said. “There were no checks and balances and we ran into trouble …we got this letter from the federal government on our withholding taxes and we ended up owing a bunch of money because there was nobody checking it.

“The last time we ran into this, yes, the auditor audited it, but it was six months later and it was screwed up when it was posted.”

“Your county attorney was very clear that HR and payroll should not be in the same department,” Weston said. “So the clarification is to you want to leave payroll to the auditor’s office or move it to the HR office. I personally think payroll should always be under somebody who signs the checks, whether that’s myself or the treasurer.”

County Treasurer Sheryl Barborak said, in her 18 years as treasurer, “payroll has balanced and the bank accounts are fine. I mean, I just don’t understand why you would want to move it from a place where it’s working so well to another place.

“The auditor knows what she's doing and she keeps everything balanced,” Barborak said. “If I ever have a problem with the payroll count, I go talk to her, she figures out what went wrong, and she fixes it. I'm just saying they know what they're doing and it's been working fine.”

Commissioners determined they want to keep payroll in the auditor’s office, but employee benefits and health insurance will be handled by HR director Misty Cook.