Dist. 158 set to approve 5-month-old audit

More than five months after a forensic auditor issued its initial report to the Huntley District 158 school board, the board is finally set to accept the audit this week.

Some board members are still not satisfied with the document, saying it is incomplete and that its conclusions are not supported.

The audit appears to have resolved one longstanding issue in the district: cash-in-lieu payments to current and former administrators.

The forensic audit showed the district made more than $200,000 in such payments.

The practice, which the current board has voted to phase out, compensated employees for health care benefits they chose not to receive.

The question remaining is whether the school board authorized the payments. If the board did not formally vote on the payments, they were illegal.

Most of the board now agrees that cash-in-lieu was included in administrators' contracts -- meaning they were legal payments the employees were contractually entitled to receive.

"This is in people's contracts," board member Tony Quagliano said. "It looked to me like this was a longstanding compensation policy."

But board member Larry Snow continues to argue the payments were made without the board's formal OK.

"You clearly have board members and administrators agreeing to do this without voting on this in public and doing this illegally," Snow said.

Despite Snow's objections, the board has agreed not to try to recover the payments.

"It's in their contract. How are you going to get it back from them?" Quagliano said.

The board did resolve, however, to try to collect money from employees who were overpaid at least $500 and pay back employees who were underpaid.

While the forensic auditor concluded there was no evidence of fraud, everyone has agreed the district's payroll process was in disarray.

"I believe it's reasonable to state that we don't believe there's fraud," Quagliano said. "I think they did a reasonable job with the information … this district was maintaining."

Since the payroll issues identified by district officials and the forensic audit came to light, the school board has voted to outsource payroll to Automatic Data Processing.