Shelby County Treasurer Catches Unauthorized Pay Raise To Newly Appointed Acting Engineer Stacy Prosser

Shelby Co. (ECWd) –

A recent comment to this article makes a great point needing to be addressed, and this article is the perfect place to do it.

“Let’s get this over with. Do the things that will fix this and move on for sake.”

While we agree with moving on, wrongdoing will never get fixed without accountability to those who keep violating both policies and laws.

During last week’s meeting, the board voted to appoint Stacy Prosser as the acting engineer.  We note he is not a licensed engineer according to the Illinois Department of Professional and Financial Regulations.  According to the County Chairman, he states anyone can be appointed to that position, which is not what the law says, but more on that in another article.

Prior to the vote, board member Barb Bennett asked if this appointment had any change in pay and the Chairman confirmed it did not.  See the video below.

Less than a week after the board stated in a public session that there was no pay increase for Prosser’s appointment, which Prosser was present to hear at the meeting, he files a false Pay/Benefit Change document with his payroll. False because he gives himself an unauthorized pay raise of $.54 cents an hour.

An email sent by the County Treasurer to the entire board is most telling.

“We have a couple of issues with the highway department payroll.  The attached employee change form was submitted by Stacy Prosser for a .54 cent an hour raise effective July 10.  There was a question asked in the board meeting as to whether or not him being acting engineer would institute a pay raise.  Bryon Coffman clearly said “no”.  Stacy’s anniversary date of hire is November 13.  There is no legitimate reason for this raise.  The other issue is that there is no department head or official signature justifying this raise.  This office will not process this raise until the board approves and directs such action.  Stacy also documented 4 hours of overtime on his timesheet.  The 2 OT hours should be recorded on the date.”

“The second issue is that the employee timesheets are required to be signed by the employee and the department head or official’s signature.  Not one of the timesheets turned in has two signatures.  I would like direction as to who is responsible to verify the time worked by these employees and be the official signature on the timesheets.  I will process these timesheets but moving forward would request the authorizing signature for payment processing.”

It is clear until people are held accountable, things will never get fixed or change in Shelby County.  Submitting unauthorized pay increases for yourself is simply wrong, especially after he sat in the County Board meeting where it was made clear that there was no pay increase for him.

We thank the Treasurer for once again preventing further unauthorized expenditures by county employees.

The big question now is, what will the county board do?  We would not be surprised if the next meeting includes a pay increase for Prosser, which would amount to rewarding bad conduct.