Ongoing City Investigation Under The Direction Of District Attorney

An investigation is continuing into the altering of a page in Eagleville’s personnel policy manual that prohibits the city from paying unused sick leave when employees resign.

Rutherford County District Attorney Bill Whitesell confirmed Monday that the probe into the issue is ongoing under the direction of his office.

"I have asked the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) to look into the matter also," he said.

Vice Mayor Ronnie Hill, who took the concerns about the possible alteration to the district attorney the day before the last council meeting, said Tuesday that the investigation is "well underway" but said he could not make any more comments.

A source, who asked not to be identified, did confirm that TBI personnel took the city computer Monday night to make a copy of the hard drive. They returned the computer to city hall on Tuesday.

They also took written statements from Hill, new City Recorder Colleen Adams and Fire Chief David Martin, the source said.

The officially signed personnel policy adopted in December 2006 says the city "shall not" pay for unused sick leave when an employee leaves the job while the suspected altered copy says "shall" pay.

A check of the city computer’s past activity indicates the sick pay page was last modified Dec. 17 at 8:06 p.m., about a year after the personnel policy was officially approved. In the modified file, the word "not" was missing.

Questions arose concerning the issue after Mayor Nolan Barham paid former city recorder Michelle Bennett $1,945.17 for unused sick pay when she left her job Oct. 31. The check was signed by Barham and Bennett, according to Hill.

City policy requires checks to be signed by two of three people. Besides Barham and Bennett, Hill is also authorized to sign checks.

Bennett told the Eagleville Times in a telephone interview Tuesday morning that she did not alter the personnel policy page.

She said she was at her daughter’s middle school basketball game at Eagleville School and stayed on for the boy’s game the night the file appears to have been modified. She said she has witnesses who saw her at the games. Even Councilman Harold Vincion was there, she said.

Discussion of who all had access to the city computer took place at the last council meeting.

At that meeting, Hill asked city recorder Adams to search the computer to find when the file had been modified.

Hill said the district attorney had asked him to have someone search the computer at that meeting to try to find out who "was looking into that computer."

At that meeting, Adams said the mayor did not have the password when she came in to help him the Saturday before, and she could not get into the computer.

Adams said Barham gave her the password on the following Wednesday, which was her first official day on the job.

She said she had no idea of where Barham got the password but Bennett said he had called her and gotten it that morning.

Both Barham and Martin said they did not know the password.

But Bennett says that from the time she left in October until January the computer has not been password protected and a password was not needed.

"When I left city hall, I took the password out so that Nolan and David could have access if they needed to see what the account balance was and to make deposits and things like that," she said.

Martin said after the last council meeting that he would "get on" the accounting program Quickbooks to look at the fire department’s bottom line.

"All I had to do was turn the computer on and click on Quickbooks," he said. "I did nothing else to get in there."

Bennett said she put the password back on about the first or second week of January when she came in to help Martin do the fire department payroll. She said she put the password back because there were "many people in and out of there" and said there was evidence others had been at the computer.

Martin said Bennett continued to do the fire department’s finances after she left the city job because she was still with the volunteer fire department.

"We allowed her to come in and print out the checks and bills that we needed paid," he said.

Bennett said she had no key to city hall and could not get in unless Barham or Martin let her in.

"I was never in there unless David or Nolan was in there with me," she said.

The conflicting sick leave policy page surfaced Jan. 14 when the mayor sent copies of it in response to a Dec. 7 open records request made by the Eagleville Times.

In his response, Barham confirmed the $1,945.71 check had been for sick pay. He also enclosed a copy of the conflicting page from the personnel policy manual that said the unused sick pay "shall" be paid and sent copies to the other council members.

Barham said he got his copy of the page that said "shall" be paid from the ordinance book that sits behind the computer.

On Dec. 13, former city attorney Travis Lampley gave Councilman Greg Buchanan an opinion saying that if Bennett had been paid for unused sick leave, that "this was would have been in error."

In his opinion, Lampley quoted the original document that said "that upon termination or resignation any unused sick leave shall not be cashed in for compensation."

Barham said at the last council meeting that he had sent Lampley the copy of the page, from which Lampley quoted the "shall not." He said he had also gotten that page from the ordinance book that was behind the computer.

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