The Wabash County Health Department and Wabash County Commissioners continue to butt heads. The latest dispute centers around time keeping checks and balances.
At a special health board meeting Wednesday, administrator Judy Wissel said the health department’s current time clock was installed in October of 2022 following questions spurred by commissioner Rob Dean. In early 2023, Wissel said commissioners requested copies of time clock reports to which she explained the limitations of the time clock reports as far as holiday, sick, PTO, and flex time pay.
Then on February 23rd of this year, the health department received a FOIA request for time clock reports. Wissel said that resulted in health board chairman Darrell Thompson reporting time clock reports “not matching”. She said after the issue was discussed, it appeared cleared up. Thompson did not attend Wednesday’s special meeting.
But then, on April 1st, Wissel said when she arrived at the county commissioner meeting, Dean and Thompson were engaged in a conversation after which Dean requested an executive session which included Thompson. That evening, Wissel said she spoke with county board chairman Scott West who told her to do “whatever we needed to do” to get the payroll system to match. After attempting to explain the issues, Wissel said West told her she “just needed to fix it.” West told Wissel if employees were out of town at meetings they needed to drive back to the office to clock in and out.
Wissel said she and Audra Spray spent countless hours researching time clock capabilities to figure out how to record PTO, holidays, etc. by manually inserting them into the time clock.
This isn’t the first time the health department has encountered issues from the county board and Wissel told the health board Wednesday that there’ll probably always be something…
The health department is the only county department that the county board has ordered to use a time clock for its’ employees. Health board member Theresa Marcotte said that fact sends a bad message to health department workers…
Health board member Dr. Bryce Miller said the untold hours spent chasing down reports for the county board are hours that could’ve been better spent….
Miller said it’s ironic that if saving money is the goal, a lot of time and money has been wasted on this issue….
Wissel’s frustration centered on the health department’s employees being held to a higher standard than other county workers….
When the dust settled, county board chairman Scott West, who is also a health board member, assured Wissel and other health board members that the issue will be resolved once and for all if a new time clock system is installed. County commissioners will look into a new time clock system for the health department it deems acceptable. Health board members said the county should split the cost of the new system with the health department since they find the system bought two years as unacceptable.