MIAMI – The Miami-Dade County Clerk is launching an investigation this week into the technique that pays the far more than 30,000 county personnel.
Juan Fernandez-Barquin reported at the very least a thousand employees have been overpaid, underpaid, or not paid out at all all over the last yr. He himself was overpaid $3,000.
Fernandez-Barquin determined to pay it all back again in one check out, but he stated other personnel have the choice to have it deducted in scaled-down increments out of their paycheck.
When the investigation is just receiving started out, he believes the county overpaid staff any place from a overall of $3 to $5 million considering that June 2022, when the county switched to a new payroll software.
“I know that the outdated process was rather antiquated for quite a few folks I’ve spoken to and that a adjust was needed,” he stated. “Then when this improve happened, evidently, there were these challenges.”
But he doesn’t place the blame on the method by itself.
“I think this is one thing that probably could have been avoided,” he mentioned. “I imagine that this is perhaps a training error.”
Fernandez-Barquin stated he located out about the difficulty when the Miami Herald reported that a county commissioner was overpaid $34,000.
“Then the far more I started out asking about, the far more I realized that this was a serious trouble that was influencing at the really the very least hundreds,” he claimed, “and then I’ve appear to the conclusion that it can be absolutely much more than than than 1,000 folks are impacted by this.”
Why did it get a information posting for the payroll department and staff members to observe they had been staying overpaid?
“I will not know why it took so long for this to come to light,” he stated, “but this is one thing that that we need to have to figure out what particularly the difficulty is, and take care of it as shortly as achievable.”
Miami Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava named for a county audit a number of months back when information broke of the commissioner getting overpaid, but Fernandez-Barquin would like an independent audit done as properly.
“I have faith in them,” he said, “But just to be on the risk-free aspect, I would also like to do an independent audit.”
To add to all of this confusion, he mentioned that people today who ended up overpaid had been taxed on that. Do specific staff members talk to for the funds back again from the IRS? Does the department do it on employees’ behalf? Or do they do what Fernandez-Barquin did and hand in a test with the taxes deducted?
He hopes to respond to all of these thoughts as a result of the audit.
