by April Scheinoha
Reporter
The Thief River Falls City Council has suspended City Administrator Angie Philipp for one week. Philipp will be suspended without pay from Wednesday, May 3 through Tuesday, May 9. The council approved the suspension at its meeting Tuesday, May 2.
Council members voted 5 to 1 to suspend Philipp. Mayor Brian Holmer, and council members Megan Bourne, Mike Lorenson, Michele McCraw and J. Scott Pream voted in favor. Council member Anthony Bolduc voted in opposition, and council member Jason Aarestad abstained from voting. Council member Steve Narverud was absent from the meeting.
Both Bolduc and Aarestad voiced disagreement with a suspension. Bolduc said he thought it was more serious than what others thought and specifically referred to firing Philipp. Aarestad asked whether his council members remembered taking the oath of the office. He said he seriously looked at this matter. He added that he didn’t think a suspension was the correct measure.
Philipp’s suspension came after a performance review related to her performance pertaining to back pay provided to employees as part of a wage study. The council met in closed session to discuss Philipp’s performance Tuesday, April 18 and then reconvened the closed session the following Tuesday. Council members met for a little more than two hours.
City leaders are able to meet in closed session to discuss an employee’s performance. Philipp is the only employee thus far to be subject to a closed meeting regarding the erroneously issued back pay.
In addition to issuing the suspension, the council also indicated that it will conduct reviews of Philipp’s job performance June 20, Aug. 15 and Oct. 17.
City Attorney Delray Sparby provided a summary of the closed meetings at the council meeting Tuesday, May 2. He said the council found Philipp was aware of the erroneously-issued back pay issued to employees in the Teamsters, Fire and Law Enforcement Labor Services unions around Dec. 16. A subsequent, similar error was allowed to occur the following pay period for employees in the Management, Administrative, Professional and Supervisory union. This further exacerbated the error. The error wasn’t brought to anyone’s attention until the first committee meeting in March. The full council became aware of the issue at the March 21 council meeting.
Sparby said the council came to the consensus that the implementation error wasn’t so much the issue because it can be fixed. The issues were the exacerbation of the error, not bringing it to the council’s attention in a timely manner, or providing a firm number to the council for its consideration of the matter.
The exact amount of the error is still unknown. Brady Martz & Associates is completing a forensic audit to determine the full amount.
Philipp didn’t comment on the suspension during the council meeting. She hasn’t responded to a request from The Times seeking comment.
Prior to voting on Philipp’s suspension, Lorenson said it was difficult for the council to review Philipp’s performance in this matter. He said the council took the matter seriously, trying to be fair and just in its decision while also making sure the public understood the council was watching tax dollars. Lorenson added it wasn’t an easy thing for the council to do.
Philipp has been employed as city administrator since 2019. Prior to that time, she served as the city’s finance director for five years. Philipp also served as interim city administrator two different times in the past when the city was seeking a city administrator. Prior to being employed by the city, she worked as a Pennington County deputy auditor-treasurer for more than 17 years. This is the first disciplinary action against Philipp in any of those positions.
The suspension centered on wage adjustments that were made in December after the wage study was completed. The first group of city employees received the wage adjustments in mid-December. Shortly after receiving their paychecks, some employees notified city administration that they had received more back pay than they should have been awarded. They had received back pay going back to the last three weeks in September. The council had approved back pay retroactive to Oct. 1. Despite the notification, no correction was made. The MAPS employees received their wage adjustments later that month. Like the first group, they, too, received back pay going back to the last three weeks in September.
The full council didn’t learn about the discrepancy until March. At the March 21 council meeting, the council agenda included amendments to two resolutions regarding the back pay. If they had been approved, the amendments would have indicated that the employees were to receive back pay going back to the last three weeks in September. At that time, those amendments were tabled.
The council has yet to see how much the city erroneously paid the employees in back pay. At a special council meeting Thursday, March 30, the council approved seeking the independent forensic audit from Brady Martz & Associates. At that time, Philipp said the erroneous amount may have been about $12,500, which didn’t include back pay paid to the Law Enforcement Labor Services union or overtime during the three weeks in September. Philipp said she didn’t have the payroll reports.
At that time, Aarestad used the example of an employee receiving $16 in back pay while another received $825. Philipp replied that half of the employees received less than $1 in wage adjustments.
No decision has been made on whether the affected employees will have to pay back the erroneously-issued back pay.