The Porter County Council on Wednesday awarded County Auditor Jim Kopp an additional $30,000 for overtime and part-time pay to tackle the latest glitch holding up the county’s 2009 tax bills.

The county is now nearly done making the transition to a new tax software program, but has identified discrepancies totaling about $700,000 between what the data shows and what was actually collected from the final 2008 tax bills issued in February.

Porter County Treasurer Jim Murphy attributed the imbalance to changes made by the auditor’s office in the tax data after the bills went out and to the removal of penalties from last year’s provisional tax bills. But Kopp said the amounts billed were correct, and that the problem stems from the conversion of data over three different software programs, with some of the numbers possibly showing up in duplicate or not converted properly.

In any event, the departments involved are now conducting a parcel-by-parcel review to pinpoint why the converted data is showing that the county took in far more than actually collected.

The county council reached the consensus that due to the ongoing delays with the 2009 tax bills, the county will issue provisional bills for the second year in a row, or bills based on the 2008 amounts that will be reconciled later.

To get the work done, Kopp told the council that his office needs more money. He said he’s out of part-time pay and that some of his employees have racked up about seven weeks’ worth of overtime.

A number of his employees attended the meeting as well, with several relaying that they have been working to the bone.

“I’ve got to be able to pay these people,” Kopp said.

Two weeks ago, the council refused to grant Kopp’s request for more personnel pay, but on Wednesday, several council members said they don’t want to be blamed for holding up the tax bills if Kopp’s office needs more funding.

Exactly when the provisional bills will go out is unknown.

Information Technology Services Director Sharon Lippens said the county offices first need to bring the tax data in balance, as well as issue the delayed 2008 bills for three Pine Township districts and to prepare the final 2008 settlement.

Although the county’s tax vendor, Low Associates, needs four to six weeks to prepare for provisional billing, Kopp said it’s unlikely the bills will be ready by the end of August unless everything else falls into place perfectly.

County officials received an email Wednesday from Low stating that the Low is now practically done with the conversion of the data from the previous Hamer program, and that the discrepancies that still remain cannot be resolved through programming but are up to the county to resolve manually.

Murphy read a portion of the email that warned that the county’s final tax distribution must be based on the receipts shown in the reports, so if the data shows more money than what was actually collected, the county will have a “significant problem.”

When asked by council member Dan Whitten, D-at large, if the county is even further behind than it was two weeks ago, Murphy said at least officials now know the magnitude of the corrections they need to make in order to balance.

As one example of the work involved, Kopp said his office had to enter 1,500 adjustments, known as corrections of errors, for the third time, since previous attempts didn’t convert properly from the previous system.

After the meeting, Kopp said part of the problem is that his office is under such intense pressure to get the work done that it isn’t given the time needed to ensure that all the numbers are in sync.

Several council members said they weren’t happy to throw more money at the delayed tax bills problem. Noting that all other government units depend on the auditor’s office for the tax billing, council member Karen Conover, R-3rd, said: “You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”

Council President Robert Poparad, D-1st, questioned why practically all of the overtime in the auditor office goes to the top two deputies, as he suggested spreading more of the work around. But one of the chief deputies, Christine Bertrand, said the work they do is more advanced and cannot be delegated to those who don’t deal with complex tax matters.

Whitten emphasized that the county council has very little control over the auditor’s office except for its budget. “We can’t be the auditor,” he said.

Council member Sylvia Graham, D-at large, suggested that the council approve the overtime only after the work gets done as an incentive, but the idea didn’t fly.

The council took two separate votes in order to pass the auditor funding. The first motion to award a total of $20,000, split equally in overtime and part-time pay, failed on a 4-3 vote with Conover, Graham, Poparad, and Whitten voting no and Laura Blaney, D-at large, Michael Bucko, D-4th, and Rita Stevenson, D-2nd, voting yes. A second vote, for $10,000 in overtime and $20,000 for part-time pay, passed 5-2, this time with Blaney and Stevenson voting no.

Posted 7/9/2009