Evening star., 1945-11-11
Auditor Sees
|koreDeIayin
ID. {. Salaries
PiIkerton Says 20 New
Clerks, Capitalization
Of Records Is Needed
BY MARION WADE DOYLE.

By MARION WADE DOYLE.
Salary payments to District EN-.
ployes are going to be delayed con.
tinuously unless 20 new clerks can
be obtained and all department pay
rolls centralized, A. r. Pilkerton.
District auditor, said yesterday.
Heads OF four of the large DEPART
ment involved agreed with Mr.. PHI.
kerton. A fifth, Robert L. Haycock,
superintendent of schools, was not
convinced.
At present Mr.. Pilkerton fully
controls the paying of one-third of
the Districts $4,000 employees. Pay
rolls for the other two-third are pre-.
pared first by the respective de-
partments, including the schools,
library and the health, welfare and
recreation departments.
Work Being Duplicated.
All the work done by these de-
partments must be duplicated by
Mr.. Pilkerton, however, because his
office is responsible for auditing the
accounts. He contends the two
operations of preparing and audit
ing the pay records should be dons
at once. No moving of records is
involved, since Mr.. Pilkerton now
has the same sets of pay records
kept by each department.
Mr.. Pilkerton and Walter Fowler.
District budget officer, first sug-
gested that payroll clerks be shifted
from the departments to the audi.
tors office to handle the centrali.
zation. The department heads were
opposed to that because they would
in any case need clerks to record
the working hours and other per-
sonnel detail.
Now that Mr.. Pilkerton has shifted
to asking for 20 entirely new clerk
positions in his Office, four of the
department heads are agreeable to
the Capitalization.
Health Department Tries Plan.
Deputy Health Officer Daniel
Secklnger said yesterday the Health
Department already has voluntarily
turned over some of its payroll
preparation to Mr.. Pilkerton and
has found this helpful" and "suc.
cessful' in avoiding late checks.
Informal opinions that the cen.
tralization would be satisfactory
with addition of 20 new clerk posi-
tions also were given by Miss Clara
w. Herbert, the librarian of the Dis.
trict Public Library; Milo F. Chris
tiansen, recreation superintendent,
and Ray Huff, welfare director.
However, the superintendent of
schools has reported to the Board
OF Education that it is highly ques-
t1onable" whether anything would
be improved by centralizing pay
records. Mr.. Haycock said yester-
day that it is the view of his ad-
ministration that preparation of
pay rolls should begin in the school
Office"
The Board of Education has asked
instead for conference with the
auditor and budget officer to work
out the payroll problem"
inexperienced Help Cited.
The late checks are caused partly
by inexperienced help in the de-
partment Offices and also by the
greatly increased work under the
night differential and overtime pro-
visions of the Federal Pay Bill, Mr..
P1kerton said. The pay bill pro-
visions increased payroll work three
times, he estimated. Few District
employees are ever paid the same
amount regularly now, he said.
The auditor said that although 20
new clerks would only double the
number he now has. they could han
die triple the number of employees
pay records because they would be
working in central location under
his direction.
The present situation will get
worse each month, he said, because
each payroll sent to him late and in
bad condition from the large de-
partments throws off his own sched-
ule. Therefore he gets further be-
hind in handling the departments
that do send rolls to him on time.
He also is getting further behind
in preparing the tax return certifi-
Gates due each employe by January
81. He is worried now that they
may not get them in time for filing
OF income tax returns March II.