From Deseret News archives:
Probe of county perk sought
Mayor Peter Corroon on Monday sent District Attorney David Yocom a letter asking his office to investigate the county's tuition assistance program. Corroon said an audit of the program "found some problems," and he wants to see a basic change in the way the program runs.
"We know right now that the way the program is set up is one of the reasons that these types of problems can occur," Corroon said. "We provide people with monetary assistance before they even take the class. Some people have been taking the money and not completing the classes."
The program allows county employees who attend an accredited college or university to receive 75 percent of their tuition costs, up to $3,000 a year, from the county.
Employees are helped with classes related to their jobs or classes aimed toward receiving an associate's or bachelor's degree in a field in which the county normally recruits "if such a degree will likely benefit the county," according to a program summary from the county. The assistance hinges on the employee completing classes with a C grade or higher.
However, since 1992, the county has been giving out the money in employees' paychecks before they complete the classes. Corroon said the Auditor's Office, in the course of auditing various county departments, found that some employees were taking advantage of the system.
"We know of at least four," Corroon said. "At this point we're going to look even further."
Among the problems, Corroon said some employees have taken the money and then failed to complete their courses. Others, he said, have received county assistance in addition to other financial aid. The county program subtracts half of an employee's outside financial aid from the assistance it pays out.
Corroon wants to see a change in the pay-first, finish-class-later setup of the program. He said most other tuition-assistance programs reimburse students only after they have completed classes, and "I don't know why Salt Lake County has been doing it differently."
He said some colleges and universities will defer a tuition due date if a student is on a tuition-assistance program, so he doesn't worry that a change would discourage employees from taking advantage of the program.
"This is a very worthy program that, when properly administered, benefits taxpayers, county government operation and our employees," Corroon said in a news release Monday.
Corroon said any discipline doled out to individual employees will depend on the severity of what they have been doing.
"We found a problem and we're going to fix it," Corroon said.
In recent years, the county has been no stranger to such accusations of double-dipping and other misuse of benefits. Most recently, under former Mayor Nancy Workman, several employees were accused of abusing a county travel- and gas-reimbursement program.
E-mail: dsmeath@desnews.com
