Auditor requests another staffer

Whitman County Auditor Eunice Coker Monday met with county commissioners to request an additional staff member to address needs of the county’s elections office.

The department currently employs two full-time staffers and one part-time employee.

“All I was doing was opening the conversation and letting them know,” she said. “It’s elections, it’s people’s votes, so to have enough staff who is paid and is paid a decent wage is necessary.”

Coker said she was asked a lot of questions, and one part of the discussion focused on being able to fund an additional staff member. Commissioner Michael Largent said he asked Coker where the funding would come from.

“She said it was the commissioner’s responsibility to get the funding,” he reported. “It is the commissioner’s responsibility to create a fiscally-sustainable budget over time. We are still working toward achieving a fiscally-sustainable budget, so I have no idea where new money would come from.”

Coker told the Gazette the commissioners have certain responsibilities when it comes to her department.

“They have to give us the facility and the budget to do our mandatory duties,” she said. “Beyond that, they have no say.”

Commissioner Art Swannack said there needs to be an awareness in regard to the budget.

“The commissioners have the authority over the budget. We’re trying to build an awareness amongst the departments in the county and electeds that if they request more money for their department, it’s going to affect what dollars go to other departments,” he said. “It’s a finite amount of money that we have to allocate.”

Coker said she does not want to make it seem as though her department is being put ahead of others. She said budgetary and staffing restraints are seen at all levels.

“It’s a county-wide issue, and I’m not saying I need people and public works doesn’t,” she said.

Largent said the processes in the elections office are something that need to be taken into account before deciding on additional staffing.

“I think the first thing to note is that I don’t work in that office, and I’m not an expert in the elections process,” he said. “I don’t believe it’s a people problem, but I believe it’s a process problem. They need to review the processes to see where they might be improved.”

The elections office has been the subject of four errors in three straight elections. The most recent was in regard to the April 26 election when nearly 300 ballots were sent to the Rosalia Rural Fire District 7 with the wrong wording. The mistaken wording had the district merging into the town. In the February election, Oakesdale voters received Tekoa ballots. In November, the race for the Colfax Hospital District commissioner was inadvertently left off the ballot, necessitating the department to send out more than 4,000 corrected ballots. Another error in which ballots were mistakenly sent to voters in outdated Pullman precincts caused more than 700 ballots to be re-sent.

“My concern was if the processes were present to prevent errors. If they are, then why was there an error?” Swannack said. “That concerns me that it’s getting to happen more frequently than it did in the past.”

Swannack said he would like to see more of a focus on procedures and policy.

“I’m not trying to start a controversy, but I know citizens are upset with the repeated errors and when you come to us asking for more money, we need to be assured that things are being done right,” he said.

Coker said she is examining other counties across the state to compare staffing. She said counties of similar sizes and similar staffing do not necessarily face the same issues.

“Stevens County is right about the same size as us, but they do not have a university right smack dab in the middle,” she said. This, Coker said, leads to a number of inactive voters who cannot be “purged off the books.” The county currently has 3,404 inactive voters and 21,500 active voters.

“We have to actively manage all of those inactive voters,” she said.

Coker said she will now be working to re-write job descriptions for her elections staff and submitting those to human resources to be re-classified. She said she is hoping to see something come of this process.

“The errors that happen have to be corrected, and I’ve always stood up and taken responsibility,” she said. “We’ve got very smart, very hardworking, dedicated people who all deserve to be paid comparable to their peers and who do too much for 2.5 people.”

Swannack also said the auditor’s budget this year includes $140,000 more than it did last year.

“There’s extra money that’s been added to her budget in the last year,” he said. The additional money, he said, was used to hire an entry level clerical person and an assistant to the director of accounting. Those staffing changes, Swannack noted, do not amount to the entirety of the $140,000.

Largent said that many counties around the state face budget issues and staffing concerns.

“Washington state’s system of financing the programs and services counties are constitutionally and statutorily required to provide is structurally unsustainable,” he said. “In general, the budget problems we find ourselves in are a legislatively-driven problem.”

Largent added, though, that counties do need to make what they have work.

“We have to find a way to live within the resources we have,” he said.

Coker also said the responsibilities mandated are not realistic given the budget.

“We’ve been looking at what’s happening and new regulations,” she said. “We can no longer do it with a staff of 2.5.”

Swannack said it is important processes are examined before additional staffing appointments are made.

“There’s things that need to be fixed, and I’m not sure that adding another person just doing the same thing will fix it. As long as your policies and procedures are there as to how you do things, people should be able to do it. Policies, procedures and training are the keys to making sure things work right.”

Coker said she is willing to put in the work for a solution.

“I have hopes that there will be a solution, but it’s not going to be tomorrow,” she said. “I’m going to be plugging away at this.”