The golden parachute a South Hadley utility manager hoped to deploy will have to be made of cheaper stuff. A review by the state inspector general’s office made mincemeat of an unwarranted request from Wayne Doerpholz.
The former general manager of the South Hadley Electric Light Department wanted to be paid $476,580 for vacation time he didn’t take (3,248 hours in all, or more than 81 weeks worth of vacation) and for sick time he didn’t use (3,593 hours of it).
While we’re happy Doerpholz has enjoyed such good health, he does not get to penalize the utility’s ratepayers. That’s the gist of Inspector General Glenn Cunha’s findings, detailed in a letter last week to Anne Awad, the SHELD commission chairwoman.
The office of the inspector general exists to hunt down waste and fraud in government. In his letter to Awad, Cunha sharply recalculated the benefits to which Doerpholz in entitled – whittling that nearly half-million dollar demand down to $15,149.20.
That amount – about 3 percent of what Doerpholz claimed – is legitimate, the IG’s office determined, based on accrued vacation time. He is not entitled to vacation or sick time pay. “Paying Doerpholz money that is not owed to him would be a waste of public funds,” Cunha wrote.
Simple as that sounds, public agencies in Massachusetts routinely waste the people’s money by failing to do the math or review contracts and personnel records. The finding is only advisory, but it is credible. If it holds up, it will save South Hadley ratepayers $461,000.
The utility will likely face much more legal wrangling with Doerpholz, who it placed on paid administrative leave last October after he was named in a federal whistleblower lawsuit. That claim alleges that Doerpholz did not respond to reports of bullying in the workplace. For the last seven months, Doerpholz has been collecting on his annual salary of $143,000.
The commission voted in February not to renew his contract; in March, Doerpholz filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, saying he got the boot because of his age. Awad says that claim is without merit. And last week, her board voted to pay its former manager $18,000.
In his department’s review, Cunha did more than recalculate what’s owed.
He faulted record-keeping within the utility and noted that as general manager, Doerpholz was the one maintaining records of his own hours, leaving him in a position, theoretically, to sweeten his pot. Cunha cited “good cause to question Doerpholz’s claimed entitlement because Doerpholz himself was responsible for maintaining SHELD’s records, implementing SHELD’s personnel policies, and enforcing the cap on carry-over vacation days, all of which gave him the opportunity to take advantage of his position to benefit himself.”
There is no proof advanced that Doerpholz fabricated records. But the IG’s office determined that record-keeping within the utility was lax.
In its review, the IG’s office looked at SHELD personnel policies going back to 1970, when Doerpholz joined the utility part-time while still in high school on through to 1982, when he became manager, and to the present. Lacking a human resources manager, the task of calculating compensation fell to Doerpholz. He was inconsistent about who was entitled to what, the IG’s office found.
In short, some got paid for unused vacation or sick time, others didn’t. If he was trying to build a case for his own eligibility for a big payout, Doerpholz wasn’t diligent. That in itself violated duties of his position, the seven-page letter says. “To the extent Doerpholz applied the vacation policy differently to different employees, he abused his authority,” Cunha wrote.
It gets worse, in Cunha’s view. “To the extent Doerpholz permitted employees to bank time, he exceeded his authority and violated his duties to the Board and the ratepayers.”
The commission’s board itself was less than diligent. It missed many opportunities to look closely at the contract that Doerpholz claimed entitled him to an inflated payout. Instead, his contract, which expired last week, rolled over several times without commissioners paying sufficient attention to it.
When the question of Doerpholz’s future financial payout went under the microscope at the IG’s office, it involved just one employee. Now, it appears that others may have been paid money to which they were not entitled. A spokesman for the IG’s office declined to say last week which employees those were or whether a wider inquiry is underway.
The message for the SHELD board is that along with a new general manager, they need a thorough modernization of personnel policies. Here’s one outfit that shouldn’t operate in the dark.