The Porter County Council Tuesday tabled a request from the County Auditor’s office for a transfer of salary funds from two deputies that would be used to raise a third deputy’s salary.

Porter County Auditor Jim Kopp said he wanted to give one of his deputies a $1,200 raise because she did not receive it when other deputies received theirs a few years ago.

Kopp also asked the council to create an Assistant Director of Budget and Finance position to assist his bookkeeping staff. He said the auditor’s office is short two jobs since the council eliminated a position during last year’s budget hearing and once before in 2006. He said he will also need $7,000 to train his staff on payroll due to one of his deputies retiring in May.

The council voted down Kopp’s request of $7,000, 3-4, but unanimously approved $4,000 instead for the training.

“We just can’t operate. We have more and more stuff thrown on us and we have nobody to do the work,” said Kopp.

Council member Sylvia Graham said the county council did not authorize any raises for this year due to the faltering economy. The council voted 7-0 to table the vote on the raises and the new position until the next meeting.

The council did approve $3,647 additional for RDS software upgrades to the payroll and surplus refunds. The software will be used so county employees can go online to view their pay stub instead of having it printed. Kopp said the software will help save on labor costs because the electronic system will not require the auditor’s office to print stacks of information that are transported to the county treasurer’s office and to the county departments.

Kopp said the records will be saved electronically on a disk. He said this is the way most big businesses handle their payment methods and the RDS system is currently used by Crown Point Schools in Lake County.

Members of the council expressed their opinion of the new system. Council member Robert Poparad said he did not like the idea of having electronic money for security reasons, saying “you get two people putting their heads together, that’s terrifying.” Council President Dan Whitten said he thought going paperless was not a bad idea. The board voted 6-1 on the software upgrades. Rita Stevenson was the only council member who said no to the upgrades.

Posted 2/24/2010