Golf course probe lands father, son in the rough [Titleist AP2 Irons]
A father routinely punching his son's time card led to the recent termination of the city of Henderson's contract with the manager of the Municipal Golf Course.
That apparently will change the way the course is run. The city is seeking proposals, which are due Friday, from people who want to lease the course. The city's previously scheduled annual audit also is currently looking into the time card problem.
Jerry R. Church, 72, had been manager of the course since 1986, and his son Robert R. "Randy" Church, 49, had been a seasonal city maintenance worker at the course for the same period. Neither would comment for this story.
The Gleaner raised questions about the circumstances of the contract's termination at the time it ended Sept. 20, which resulted in City Manager Russell Sights issuing a terse statement that confirmed the contract's end amid "possible management irregularities." No criminal charges were pending, Sights said.
The Gleaner filed a request under the state Open Records Act to inspect all investigative files concerning the case. The city complied, and The Gleaner was able to obtain a copy of a DVD depicting interviews conducted Sept. 15 at the Henderson Police Department with both Jerry and Randy Church, who had not been aware their interviews were being recorded.
Randy Church resigned at the end of his 45-minute interview with city Finance Director Robert Gunter and HPD Lt. Charles "Chip" Stauffer. He freely admitted that his time records had been falsified after Gunter confronted him with evidence that his city time cards overlapped with his time cards at the U.S. Postal Service in Evansville at least 24 times between March 18 and June 3.
But Randy Church offered an explanation for the overlap: Although he technically was a seasonal worker by the city's standards -- working spring through fall -- he actually worked at the golf course year-round, and his father was merely trying to compensate him for that.
"I'm there year-round at the golf course and my dad gives me comp time," Randy Church told them. "There's not any money changing hands that I haven't worked for. Nobody's cheating anybody."
"The problem is that there is no way to document that," Stauffer replied during the interview. "I'm not disputing that you worked there in November, but basically you've lied by having these time cards punched."
"These are official time records," Gunter added. "The city gets into a lot of trouble" when they are tampered with. "The city puts a lot of reliance in the time cards. This is how we follow federal and state laws."
Exactly how many hours were falsified in Randy Church's time records is a matter of some dispute.
Gunter's investigation covered only 11 weeks, and in the interview with Randy Church he asked for a bottom line. If Jerry and Randy Church could provide the total number of hours falsified, he said, "it would save us a lot of work. What I've done is very time consuming. I'm tracking you every minute of your day, both here with the city and at the post office."
That apparently will change the way the course is run. The city is seeking proposals, which are due Friday, from people who want to lease the course. The city's previously scheduled annual audit also is currently looking into the time card problem.
Jerry R. Church, 72, had been manager of the course since 1986, and his son Robert R. "Randy" Church, 49, had been a seasonal city maintenance worker at the course for the same period. Neither would comment for this story.
The Gleaner raised questions about the circumstances of the contract's termination at the time it ended Sept. 20, which resulted in City Manager Russell Sights issuing a terse statement that confirmed the contract's end amid "possible management irregularities." No criminal charges were pending, Sights said.
The Gleaner filed a request under the state Open Records Act to inspect all investigative files concerning the case. The city complied, and The Gleaner was able to obtain a copy of a DVD depicting interviews conducted Sept. 15 at the Henderson Police Department with both Jerry and Randy Church, who had not been aware their interviews were being recorded.
Randy Church resigned at the end of his 45-minute interview with city Finance Director Robert Gunter and HPD Lt. Charles "Chip" Stauffer. He freely admitted that his time records had been falsified after Gunter confronted him with evidence that his city time cards overlapped with his time cards at the U.S. Postal Service in Evansville at least 24 times between March 18 and June 3.
But Randy Church offered an explanation for the overlap: Although he technically was a seasonal worker by the city's standards -- working spring through fall -- he actually worked at the golf course year-round, and his father was merely trying to compensate him for that.
"I'm there year-round at the golf course and my dad gives me comp time," Randy Church told them. "There's not any money changing hands that I haven't worked for. Nobody's cheating anybody."
"The problem is that there is no way to document that," Stauffer replied during the interview. "I'm not disputing that you worked there in November, but basically you've lied by having these time cards punched."
"These are official time records," Gunter added. "The city gets into a lot of trouble" when they are tampered with. "The city puts a lot of reliance in the time cards. This is how we follow federal and state laws."
Exactly how many hours were falsified in Randy Church's time records is a matter of some dispute.
Gunter's investigation covered only 11 weeks, and in the interview with Randy Church he asked for a bottom line. If Jerry and Randy Church could provide the total number of hours falsified, he said, "it would save us a lot of work. What I've done is very time consuming. I'm tracking you every minute of your day, both here with the city and at the post office."
2011-10-31 14:13
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