Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Members of the Commission – good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to finally be able to come before you today to tell you the truth about what happened and how it happened in this particular case.
I do want to let you know that I do have legal council with me today. Mr. Mike Brown is with me, but Mike won’t be talking to you today. That will be me. Because today is about you and your vote and me and my career.
After going through these last few weeks and subjected to this kind of public scrutiny once again, I’ve had numerous phone calls and visits from friends and family to say why do you want to go through this? Why don’t you just go ahead and retire and go on out while you might have a little time left to enjoy it. They reminded me of all my accomplishments over my 35 years and that I’ve got nothing to prove to them about what I’ve done or my reputation.
And I almost did that. I actually gave Mr. Russell a proposal for potentially your consideration to possibly go out early and just let it lay there. But after much soul searching and prayer about this situation, my resignation is off the table because there’s one thing more important to me than any money or anything else in this world, and that’s my integrity.
So now – why are we here today? I’ve been accused of fraudulently signing a time card for an employee that showed four days of regular work hours when in fact the employee did not work.
Well, I’m here to tell you that that’s absolutely true. Positively, absolutely true.
I did sign that time card and that employee did not work.
So why in heaven’s name would I do such a foolish and fraudulent thing and risk my career, 15 of which has been as your director? A director in which, and a career in which I’ve managed tens of millions of your dollars without incident. Never played a free round of golf on your municipal golf course through all the years we operated it. I’ve paid every time I played. Never even got a free Coca Cola from one of our concession stands. Never borrowed a piece of equipment for personal use. Never hired a family member for a summer job.
So why in the world would I want to do something as foolish as that? Well, here’s why – because the recording of that kind of time has been standard process for our department for years and years and years.
And that is for exempt employees who are exempt for overtime pay.
Being allowed and granted time off from work and putting in the extra hours and doing the above and beyond things for this city is not only important, but it’s essential for the morale of the workforce. Essential when you’re out there working these people day in and day out.
As a reminder to you, the Fair Labor Standards Act defines nonexempt employees as being eligible for overtime pay. You have to pay those employees.
Exempt employees are not. You cannot pay them overtime.
Generally, exempt employees are supervisor level employees and above, but not in all cases, such as an athletic coordinator – those who run softball tournaments, tennis tournaments. They are pay grade 45 making $32,000 a year. They’re exempt from any overtime.
So when did the practice of giving time off for exempt employees start? Well, I can tell you it’s been at least 35 years. It’s been my whole career, working under two other directors for the first 19 of those years. It’s been a process we’ve done my whole career.
Why is it so prevalent in the Recreation and Parks Department? Because it’s the nature of what we do. Putting on events requires mass hours when you’re putting on softball tournaments, tennis tournaments, baseball tournaments, running special events such as the Tour of Georgia, Ironman. Those kinds of events. It’s the nature of what we do, putting in mass hours to get the job done.
It’s not typical of most departments and we understand that. Most departments are geared towards 8:30-5:00 generally. Ours is not and that’s the nature of what we do.
We also operate 63 facilities county-wide, and there are always things that come up with operating those facilities that are going to be bringing in kind of overtime situations and response to things like break ins, vandalism, alarms being set off – all sorts of things in the middle of the night and on weekends and on nights. These are the kinds of things we have to respond to.
So what actually happened with this employee? How did this actually happen?
This employee in question is our operations manager in charge of all the park maintenance and facilities for 63 facilities and is an exempt employee.
This employee responded to numerous calls like I just got through mentioning over the course of the first few months of 2011, many of which I actually called her to respond after the Sheriff’s Department would call me – you’ve got a break in at such and such facility, you’ve got a water break at this facility. These kinds of things are happening constantly.
So she built up quite a bit of time over a four or five month period and never had a chance to take the time off.
In June of 2011, this employee went out on medical leave and was out for five months. Did not return until the first of December.
December 22, this employee asked for time off to her supervisor and to use these days that she never had a chance or for us to have the chance to say thank you for working all these additional hours. She asked for that time to be used.
According to her, her supervisor granted that time. She turned in the appropriate internal paperwork that we use to track these kinds of times. She turned it in.
The employee takes the time off. Get back to work January 3, my first order of business that particular work day was to terminate the employment of this supervisor for reasons totally outside of this time card issue. I had no idea this time card issue was even an issue. I had no idea that she had even gone out on this kind of time.
So this supervisor, January 3 is no longer employed with the city. January 4, the payroll clerk brings this time card into me and says four of those days on this time card are actually days that she was granted off for exempt employee comp time.
I asked the employee what’s the deal. ‘I was verbally given that approval, I never would have taken off.’ The employee took those four days off.
After the fact on this Wednesday, I’m handed this time card and I’ve got this issue. I’ve got an employee telling me one thing and I’ve got a supervisor who’s no longer employed and I typically don’t make it a habit of calling ex-employees for information.
So I sided with the employee and signed the time card because I knew she had built this time up. There was no question about that. She had a massive amount of time that she had given to this city.
I signed the time card.
Now, why would I sign that card as regular? Because that’s what it goes down as – as regular hours.
[Beck gives a presentation on the overhead projector detailing the process of logging hours for an exempt employee]
That has been the process for years and years and years. It’s not something that just came up this past December or just came up through this investigation. This has been our process that we have used.
Are we the only department that does this? I will guarantee you we’re not. Any department director worth his weight is going to give an employee some time off and has throughout their career. Now, how often it comes up – it’s not near as often as what it is with us because of the nature of what we do, but every department has done this in some form. The question is, how they record the time. This is how we were told how to record the time in these situations.
That is what happened in this case, gentlemen. Now, Mr. Mayor, if I could…in conclusion: if you all wanted to make a change at the top because you think it’s just time for a change, you think the Recreation Department needs to go in a different direction – I’m okay with that. I understand that. It’s part of the nature of what we all understand.
But to terminate me – which I’ve already been given a letter recommending my termination by Mr. Russell before he had a chance to hear any of this.
I’m asking you not to terminate me for this because this was not a fraudulent case. This was not a case where old Tom stole anything from this government. This is a case of standard process that we’ve been using for years and years. If the process is wrong – tell us. If there was another process to have done it better, I would have gladly done it. This was the process that we knew how to do – how to record it. This is what we did. For years and years.
Thank you for your time, Mr. Mayor.
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After going through these last few weeks and subjected to this kind of public scrutiny once again, I’ve had numerous phone calls and visits from friends and family to say why do you want to go through this? Why don’t you just go ahead and retire and go on out while you might have a little time left to enjoy it. They reminded me of all my accomplishments over my 35 years and that I’ve got nothing to prove to them about what I’ve done or my reputation.
And I almost did that. I actually gave Mr. Russell a proposal for potentially your consideration to possibly go out early and just let it lay there. But after much soul searching and prayer about this situation, my resignation is off the table because there’s one thing more important to me than any money or anything else in this world, and that’s my integrity.
So now – why are we here today? I’ve been accused of fraudulently signing a time card for an employee that showed four days of regular work hours when in fact the employee did not work.
Well, I’m here to tell you that that’s absolutely true. Positively, absolutely true.
I did sign that time card and that employee did not work.
So why in heaven’s name would I do such a foolish and fraudulent thing and risk my career, 15 of which has been as your director? A director in which, and a career in which I’ve managed tens of millions of your dollars without incident. Never played a free round of golf on your municipal golf course through all the years we operated it. I’ve paid every time I played. Never even got a free Coca Cola from one of our concession stands. Never borrowed a piece of equipment for personal use. Never hired a family member for a summer job.
So why in the world would I want to do something as foolish as that? Well, here’s why – because the recording of that kind of time has been standard process for our department for years and years and years.
And that is for exempt employees who are exempt for overtime pay.
Being allowed and granted time off from work and putting in the extra hours and doing the above and beyond things for this city is not only important, but it’s essential for the morale of the workforce. Essential when you’re out there working these people day in and day out.
As a reminder to you, the Fair Labor Standards Act defines nonexempt employees as being eligible for overtime pay. You have to pay those employees.
Exempt employees are not. You cannot pay them overtime.
Generally, exempt employees are supervisor level employees and above, but not in all cases, such as an athletic coordinator – those who run softball tournaments, tennis tournaments. They are pay grade 45 making $32,000 a year. They’re exempt from any overtime.
So when did the practice of giving time off for exempt employees start? Well, I can tell you it’s been at least 35 years. It’s been my whole career, working under two other directors for the first 19 of those years. It’s been a process we’ve done my whole career.
Why is it so prevalent in the Recreation and Parks Department? Because it’s the nature of what we do. Putting on events requires mass hours when you’re putting on softball tournaments, tennis tournaments, baseball tournaments, running special events such as the Tour of Georgia, Ironman. Those kinds of events. It’s the nature of what we do, putting in mass hours to get the job done.
It’s not typical of most departments and we understand that. Most departments are geared towards 8:30-5:00 generally. Ours is not and that’s the nature of what we do.
We also operate 63 facilities county-wide, and there are always things that come up with operating those facilities that are going to be bringing in kind of overtime situations and response to things like break ins, vandalism, alarms being set off – all sorts of things in the middle of the night and on weekends and on nights. These are the kinds of things we have to respond to.
So what actually happened with this employee? How did this actually happen?
This employee in question is our operations manager in charge of all the park maintenance and facilities for 63 facilities and is an exempt employee.
This employee responded to numerous calls like I just got through mentioning over the course of the first few months of 2011, many of which I actually called her to respond after the Sheriff’s Department would call me – you’ve got a break in at such and such facility, you’ve got a water break at this facility. These kinds of things are happening constantly.
So she built up quite a bit of time over a four or five month period and never had a chance to take the time off.
In June of 2011, this employee went out on medical leave and was out for five months. Did not return until the first of December.
December 22, this employee asked for time off to her supervisor and to use these days that she never had a chance or for us to have the chance to say thank you for working all these additional hours. She asked for that time to be used.
According to her, her supervisor granted that time. She turned in the appropriate internal paperwork that we use to track these kinds of times. She turned it in.
The employee takes the time off. Get back to work January 3, my first order of business that particular work day was to terminate the employment of this supervisor for reasons totally outside of this time card issue. I had no idea this time card issue was even an issue. I had no idea that she had even gone out on this kind of time.
So this supervisor, January 3 is no longer employed with the city. January 4, the payroll clerk brings this time card into me and says four of those days on this time card are actually days that she was granted off for exempt employee comp time.
I asked the employee what’s the deal. ‘I was verbally given that approval, I never would have taken off.’ The employee took those four days off.
After the fact on this Wednesday, I’m handed this time card and I’ve got this issue. I’ve got an employee telling me one thing and I’ve got a supervisor who’s no longer employed and I typically don’t make it a habit of calling ex-employees for information.
So I sided with the employee and signed the time card because I knew she had built this time up. There was no question about that. She had a massive amount of time that she had given to this city.
I signed the time card.
Now, why would I sign that card as regular? Because that’s what it goes down as – as regular hours.
[Beck gives a presentation on the overhead projector detailing the process of logging hours for an exempt employee]
That has been the process for years and years and years. It’s not something that just came up this past December or just came up through this investigation. This has been our process that we have used.
Are we the only department that does this? I will guarantee you we’re not. Any department director worth his weight is going to give an employee some time off and has throughout their career. Now, how often it comes up – it’s not near as often as what it is with us because of the nature of what we do, but every department has done this in some form. The question is, how they record the time. This is how we were told how to record the time in these situations.
That is what happened in this case, gentlemen. Now, Mr. Mayor, if I could…in conclusion: if you all wanted to make a change at the top because you think it’s just time for a change, you think the Recreation Department needs to go in a different direction – I’m okay with that. I understand that. It’s part of the nature of what we all understand.
But to terminate me – which I’ve already been given a letter recommending my termination by Mr. Russell before he had a chance to hear any of this.
I’m asking you not to terminate me for this because this was not a fraudulent case. This was not a case where old Tom stole anything from this government. This is a case of standard process that we’ve been using for years and years. If the process is wrong – tell us. If there was another process to have done it better, I would have gladly done it. This was the process that we knew how to do – how to record it. This is what we did. For years and years.
Thank you for your time, Mr. Mayor.
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