Causey says $1M mistake his fault

Ever since a county miscalculation of $1 million designated for county employees’ mid-point raises was announced publicly last week, county administration has been working to discover how such a massive accounting error was made, and deal with the fall-out from such a mistake.

Although the Board of Commissioners approved allocating $747,000 for a mid-point raise for a majority of county employees, it was discovered that the county actually needed $1.7 million to bring those staffers to what was considered the mid point. Commissioners, told last Monday about the issue, voted to keep the budgeted amount at the initial $747,000.

The proposed increase in salaries was approved for the county budget back in June, and would not take effect until Aug. 15, according to County Manager Ed Causey, who also took responsibility for the miscalculation.

“Good bit of the challenge comes back to me,” Causey said during an interview Monday. “The way I had written the budget message. It was a mistake on my part. Fortunately we caught it in time, but we created some personal anxiety for a number of people, and for that I’m truly sorry.”

Although Causey was not able to provide a concrete number on how many employees were expecting the original raise, he did express concern about those living paycheck to paycheck.

He said the county is currently still calculating what the actual raises will be compared to what they planned.

Causey also said that he was not aware if employees had been told what their raise amount would have been.

While he noted that some department heads have expressed their concern over the situation, any complaints by county employees are handled through Sampson County Human Resources.

“If we could have prevented this we would have — we didn’t do anything purposely,” Causey explained, stating it was solely a calculation error.

“It’s just a mathematical error, not a policy matter,” added County Commissioner Chairman Jerol Kivett.

Kivett, who just returned from a state-wide county commissioners workshop, joined the conversation in Causey’s office Monday.

Kivett said the county had paid for a professional pay study, and when the pay study was finalized and sent to the county for review, “We realized we needed more money than expected.”

To even remotely reach the extra $1 million “accidentally” included in the original salary increases would require an increase in county funding through other measures not yet discussed publicly, the two noted.

“This county has a big demand for services and a small population to support it and we are trying to make it as reasonable for the residents as possible” Kivett said, adding that Sampson is a tier 1 county.

With Sampson being a large land-sized county, there is a large amount of land to cover by public services such as E.M.S., law enforcement, and health department, spread out across a large area.

“These services are 70 percent of the budget and the population has declined,” said Kivett.

While growth in the northern part of the county has continued to slowly grow, the southern end of the county has seen a population loss, with the overall population of the county having slightly dropped over the past several years by a few thousand residents.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau the population of Sampson County at the time of the 2020 census stood at 59, 036. Compared to slightly over 63,000 during the 2010 census, with an employment rate of 53 percent.

One major issue the county is dealing with in terms of funding, Kivett pointed out, is that roughly 400 parcels of land pays 30 percent of all property taxes in the entire county, out of a total of roughly 60,000 parcels.

While the Board of Commissioners met immediately after the interview, the majority of time was spent in a closed door session out of the public’s earshot. Nothing about the funding miscalculation was discussed once the board came back into open session.