EDITORIAL: Controller transparency standard with 'special project pay'

Apr. 18—IN corporate terms, the elected office of county controller could be considered the equivalent of a chief financial officer. But the job is popularly known by another nickname — fiscal watchdog.

As chief steward of the county's taxpayer dollars, the controller has to make sure that procedure takes place in public.

Mercer County Controller Steve Sherman fell short last month in that imperative.

County Commissioner Tim McGonigle accused Sherman of funding misappropriation Thursday during the county commissioners meeting after he paid two of his senior staff $6,000, spread across two pay periods, what the controller called "special project pay."

While the county did not identify the employees, commissioners did say that both employees were on salary and therefore not eligible for additional pay for working extra hours. Put another way, Sherman changed the salaries of two people in his department.

That's a problem. Changing the pay of employees falls under the Mercer County Salary Board's purview.

Mercer County Salary Board is comprised of county Commissioners Ann Coleman, William Finley Jr. and McGonigle, and Controller Sherman as permanent members. On matters involving a department run by an elected row officer, such as sheriff or district attorney, the elected official sits on the salary board as a temporary member.

The salary board never approved Sherman's pay increase maneuver, which makes it potentially illegal. District Attorney Peter C. Acker said he would investigate the report.

In an email sent April 11 to The Herald, Sherman said the two employees merited the bump in salary because they put in additional time on a software project that will ultimately save hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But the issue of whether the employees deserved a reward for their extra work is really not the point here.

If Sherman believed his staffers merited a bonus, he should have defended it in public, at a meeting of the Mercer County Salary Board.

Sherman said in the email that he learned March 15 of the need to expedite the software project. He then met with with Coleman and Finley, who gave temporary approval but said the salary board would need to ratify the pay increases.

In that April 11 email, Sherman said the situation demanded immediate action and that he approved the two employees to work overtime starting March 19.

Mercer County Salary Board meets, as needed, concurrently with the county commissioners on Thursdays. Sherman could have — indeed, should have — called for a salary board meeting on March 21, or during commissioners' meetings on March 28, April 4 or April 11.

When we asked Monday why he didn't call for a salary board meeting at the earliest possible opportunity, Sherman responded Wednesday by email to say that Coleman told him after April 6 to place the matter before salary board, and that today was the soonest he could schedule a session.

That doesn't mitigate the problem.

As the county's chief financial officer, Sherman shouldn't have waited for Coleman's go-ahead to schedule a salary board meeting. That public action should have taken place as quickly as possible — March 21 at the earliest.

Instead, it took nearly a full month after the controller became aware of the prospect for additional expenses.

That $6,000 figure amounts to a small percentage of an $88.1 million total budget and the expenditure probably will be approved Thursday with the salary board votes of Sherman, Coleman and Finley.

But that's not the salient point here.

The controller, more than anyone else in the county courthouse, has to be a stickler for procedure because the taxpayers and residents trust that officeholder to be the fiscal watchdog.

For that to happen, the expenditure of public taxpayer funds must be approved in public at the earliest possible opportunity.

That's Local Government 101.