By Bill Bowden
Bill Bowden is a retired Verizon Delaware executive and past president of the Delaware Quality Award. He also served eight years in state government as the executive director of the Department of Technology and Information.
The recent Dual Employment Performance Audit identifies serious weaknesses in Delaware’s system for preventing public employees from being paid for overlapping work hours. The Auditor calls for better reporting, more reliable timekeeping, stronger supervisory verification, and improved statewide oversight.
Delaware has spent more than a decade documenting the same weaknesses, issuing the same findings, and expressing the same concerns. Meanwhile, individuals may be receiving dual compensation without consequence.
The State must stop wringing its hands and start enforcing accountability.
Those recommendations should be implemented. But the audit leaves an equally important question: What happens to cases where dual compensation may already have occurred?
New procedures may prevent future problems, but they do not resolve the cases already identified. Delaware should determine whether anyone was improperly paid, how much taxpayer money was involved, and what corrective action is appropriate.
The law already provides a framework
Delaware law establishes a straightforward principle: taxpayers should not pay someone more than once for coincident work hours.
The Dual Employment law establishes responsibilities for employees, supervisors, employers, the Public Integrity Commission, and the Auditor of Accounts.
Under current law, an elected or appointed official who is also a public employee must disclose that dual employment to the Public Integrity Commission within 15 days after the dual employment begins.
The law also addresses situations in which elected or appointed responsibilities interfere with an employee’s regular workday. Compensation generally must be reduced proportionately for work time missed unless permitted leave or approved make-up time is properly used.
Supervisors have responsibilities too. They must verify required time records at least once each pay period.
The purpose is straightforward: taxpayers should not pay someone twice for the same hours.
The Auditor found significant weaknesses in how these requirements have been administered. Those weaknesses need to be corrected, but they should not prevent the State from reviewing individual cases.
In fact, the Auditor has recommended that Delaware more clearly define the responsibilities not only of agencies and the Public Integrity Commission, but also of dually employed individuals.
The State should fix the weaknesses identified by the Auditor while reviewing cases where overlapping compensation may have occurred.
Review the cases already identified
Delaware does not need a new computer system or another study before it begins reviewing the cases already identified through audits, disclosures, payroll records, or other credible evidence.
A review should determine whether overlapping compensation actually occurred, how many hours and how much taxpayer money were involved, whether leave or approved make-up time was properly used, and whether the employee and supervisor complied with their respective responsibilities.
Any review should begin with the records and give the employee an opportunity to explain apparent overlaps. There may be legitimate explanations for some cases. Others may reveal administrative mistakes rather than misconduct.
But where the records establish that someone received public compensation twice for the same hours, the State should determine whether those funds can be recovered under applicable law or employment policy and whether additional administrative, ethical, civil, or criminal review is warranted.
An inadequate payroll or timekeeping system may help explain how an improper payment occurred. It should not end the inquiry.
Put Delaware’s new accountability structure to work
Delaware now has something it did not have during many of the years in which dual employment problems were being discussed: an Office of Inspector General.
The Inspector General’s responsibilities include investigating fraud, waste, mismanagement, corruption, and other abuse of government resources. Delaware law also provides for cooperation among the Inspector General, Auditor of Accounts, Public Integrity Commission, Attorney General, and other appropriate agencies.
This issue could be an early test of whether that accountability structure works as intended.
The Inspector General should coordinate with the Auditor and Public Integrity Commission to review credible cases of potential dual compensation and determine whether additional investigation or corrective action is warranted.
Where appropriate, that review should determine whether public funds can be recovered, whether employment or disciplinary action should be recommended, and whether a matter should be referred for further civil or criminal review.
The purpose should be to establish responsibility and correct violations, not to assume that every payroll discrepancy represents wrongdoing.
Accountability also cannot stop with the individual employee. Agencies are responsible for maintaining adequate controls, and supervisors have specific verification responsibilities. An agency’s failure does not necessarily excuse an employee’s conduct, and an employee’s violation does not excuse weak agency controls.
Both should be examined.
Delaware has studied this problem long enough. The latest audit gives the State more than enough information to begin asking what happened in the individual cases it uncovered while simultaneously fixing the weaknesses that allowed potential violations to go undetected.
The State does not need another study before it asks a simple question about the cases already identified:
Was anyone paid twice for the same hours?
If the answer is yes, Delaware should determine how much was improperly paid, whether the money can be recovered, and who was responsible.
That work can begin now.
Public confidence in government depends not merely on identifying weaknesses, but on correcting them.
This needs to be brought to closure. Delaware taxpayers deserve nothing less.
