Some random thoughts about the state of Somervell County’s accountability and finances

A commenter named Huckleberry said this on one of the Cindy Gray posts (in particular the one about the money she spent on office chairs and a desk at the Expo. I want to highlight this comment and also add additional comments on it, from various thoughts I’ve had poking around for awhile.

I admire your work ethic’s as far as getting down to the nitty-gritty Salon. There should always be a check and balance on any P.O. outgoing and incoming. After all the EXPO is still owned and operated by Somervell County. My question is why would Nikki Weedon give anyone the time of day about ordering new office furniture for the EXPO considering it was soon to be sold. That makes no sense! It certainly makes me wonder what else Nikki Weedon might have let Cindy Gray slide through the “Approved Purchase Order Stamp Line” when she thought she needed or just wanted something new, on the counties dime. Maybe it’s time to have a total Audit by the State of our Auditor’s Office considering, she and Cindy had a very loyal and close working relationship as well as a friendship outside of their job. It’s not wise to stall or just refuse the people’s request on the information that your office has been asked for because that only makes you look guilty of hiding something. Anyone that head’s any department that has to be accountable for money should always be transparent about their actions, because you better believe that the people whom hold them responsible will want to see the book’s and that’s their right.
Nikki Weedon when you hire a Felon, Thief, Liar, and a Drug Dealer you better be smart enough to check and see if they can be Bonded. If they can’t be then they can still be prosecuted but you can never expect to retrieve what $ amounts may have been stolen, that’s what a bond is for! In many Commissioner’s Court Meetings among other places the people have been that told she floats under your wing. Did you check out her qualifications, did you know that she was a Felon among other thing’s, did you check to see if she was Bonded by the State? That was part of your job, right? Have you ever had any problems with her work that you just signed off on, that you knew was wrong? Can we all feel secure that under your “Ethics of Accountability” we can all breathe with 100% positivity that our money and interest are secure. I certainly hope you can prove this Nikki Weedon. No stone shall be left unturned to prove you are right or wrong.

There are three things in this excellent comment that I believe need explored more, or again. One is the issue of whether the person handing the money is bonded (or should be). A second is the great suggestion that what is needed is a complete audit by the state. A third is about what seems to be a less than common sense process regarding purchase orders

Here is a link to all the articles on Somervell County Salon re: Gray I’m not going to hyperlink every single thing written about below but you can read more.

It has not appeared to me that there has been anyone closely watching what Cindy Gray did when she was a payroll clerk (and then apparently changed her job description to Payroll Director without the knowledge and permission of the commissioners, probably because she was HR at that point too) (Side note here that although Gray goes by Cyndi or Cyndy here, it’s Cindy on her driver’s license. ) Suzanne Graves told me that she knew that Gray was on probation for a felony indictment when she was hired in and apparently this may have been known at the police dept. Graves hired her with the strict provision that Gray would not be handling money. As the payroll person AND also HR for a time, it was her job to keep all the records updated for, say, paychecks, insurance, job applications, drug tests (if given), etc. Some months back I asked the commissioners who was her boss and noted that the job description said the commissioners were. Later, Gray had the HR position taken away to her great dismay and I don’t think the public knows why. She also for some reason was given the job of working at the Expo AT THE SAME TIME that she was still doing payroll and had 2 offices. Then, she was given the job of Director at the Expo and I don’t think the job was put out for bid. Nikki Weedon at that point was formally listed as her boss, so anytime Gray had an issue, she should have reported to her boss, NOT Danny Chambers, right?

Gray had an unsavory reputation with a lot of people, had workers at the Expo sign a non-disclosure form which she herself did not adhere to. Huckleberry’s point in the comment above about the furniture Gray bought bears examination. The county has been trying to sell the Expo for months (heck, I remember the County, with Danny still as judge, trying to sell the Expo during the time of the Luminant lawsuit), so why would there be MORE of our taxpayer money being spent for the comfort of a *director* who theoretically would only be in that position until the Expo was sold?

The last straw, apparently, was her unprofessional conduct at a Pow Wow Expo event, there was an executive session and she was fired. However, is she being given unemployment insurance? Was she written up in her personnel file for her actions? I have spoken with at least one person who was fired by Gray, did not apparently do anything wrong for which they should have been written up IF that were so and was NOT given unemployment insurance. Is this a double standard? Did the HR Department not apply the same standard for others that they did for Gray? Have they added the criminal trespass warning she got last month? Frankly, I find the personnel records to be somewhat shambolic; at one time in the past I did an open records request for Gray’s file and it did not contain most of what you would think should be in it. Making the point here that Gray was the HR person and the one responsible to keep good records and I wondered if it might be possible that she simply threw away records she didn’t want people to see; best case is that she was incompetent. If no one was really looking over her shoulder, and certainly the commissioners didn’t realize that they were listed as her bosses at one point, how would anyone know what she was doing?

How do we even know if she completely screwed up payroll or other functions involving employees? Suppose she did. According to Huckleberry, Gray was not bonded (maybe she could NOT be bonded because of her criminal record). I am not an expert on bonds but it is my understand that they are a type of insurance to say that if the person in charge of a given function has been bonded, and something goes wrong financially, the bond company will pay back money to keep the local govt afloat. In fact, the treasurer of a county government, when elected, has to execute a bond. Since at some point Somervell County cut off the payroll position from the treasury, did Gray have to execute a bond before dealing with money (and she may have still been on probation for her theft at that point)? To be clear, I’m not even sure why Somervell County wanted to cut off payroll from the treasury, along with attempting to change the Texas Constitution to make the treasurer an appointed job instead of elected.

I was assured repeatedly by the commissioners that Gray would not have anything to do with money, even though Director of the Expo and presumably… um.. handling money. I heard a story at one point that cash was not being put in a secure place in the refreshments area but instead could have been stuffed into people’s pockets. If that were true and not just a rumour, there would be no way to know if the amount that was turned in for profit was actually the same as what came in during purchases. Made me think maybe the Expo should only do debit or credit cards and not handle cash at all. And, according to the video I saw from when Gray got her criminal trespassing warning, she was apparently doing side jobs at the Expo, including photographing people, without a contract. Was she paid directly? Was there an accounting of this? Did she do other things on the side to make money? (Chambers said he wished she hadn’t done that) You would think that a person heading the Expo, who was just slid into the job without specific experience and apparently without going out for bids on that position, would be making enough money not to add extra things into her day.

There’s not even a report about the Expo that has been going to the commissioners, like all of the other monthly reports from other departments that are showcased in the monthly regular commissioners court meetings. It’s not like those reports have never existed, but apparently no one was making sure they were being done by the *Director*. Wouldn’t you like to see something that showed the events, dates, money made, money spent, etc as previous reports did? Why was not this required of Gray?

Gray at one point apparently threatened a lawsuit with Somervell County. And I heard repeatedly that at least some of the commissioners wanted to dump Gray but did not have the numbers to do so. Could this possibly explain why it was that the commissioners turned a blind eye to Gray? More darkly, leads me to wonder if there could have been something behind her threats that the commissioners are loathe to have see the light of day, entirely speculation on my part. Was there really no one that was competent with a clean record to handle money or had, in the second instance, a background and skill set with running a large event location?

At one point I did an open records request asking for emails regarding Gray. There was something weird in one of the emails coming back from a former employee under Nikki Weedon. This employee had apparently quit her job because she was upset about an unconventional accounting practice that involved Gray and, at least in my reading, appeared to deviate from the way Weedon normally did it . In that case, there was no purchase order put with an invoice. She said “I know if anyone else in the county asked if we could pay an invoice with a credit card for someone who was as a vendor with a date not even 2 weeks prior on the invoice, you would have said no.” Read the email because it’s apparent that there were invoices that were paid but were not presented to court for approval (nor for the public to be able to see). Point is here, are there other instances of monies coming in without invoices or purchase orders tied to them that have been approved by Weedon, perhaps presented by Gray, but did not go through the court process for approval through the commissioners? Sounds like hiding money to me and at best, is not a professional way to be good stewards of taxpayer money.

I applaud the idea that Somervell County needs to call in an independent auditor since it appears there may be some issues with the accounts. I cannot find it right this minute, but I was at a commissioners meeting this last year in which, to my recollection, Somervell County voted to stop using the independent auditor, Mark. If I am wrong, please point it out in the comments as I like to be able to point to documents or video and my memory fuzzy here. But if there is a chance that, either through incompetence or some other reason, there are flaws, then an outside auditor would hopefully find them.

Finally, I have spoken with some former employees of the Expo who have told me their views on Gray as manager. Widening this out. If you have an issue with anything that had to do with payroll or HR or related functions, please feel free to send in a tip to talk@glenrose.net and if you leave your number I will call you back or if you leave an email, will email you.