CHICOPEE — The assistant director in the city’s beleaguered human resources department resigned abruptly, taking the mayor and other city leaders to task for blaming her and her co-workers for continuing to pay benefit premiums for employees after they died or resigned.
Samantha L. Wilson, who was serving as acting human resources director for about a month, sent a four-paragraph letter to Mayor John L. Vieau and the 13 city councilors on Tuesday night announcing that she was leaving immediately for health reasons.
“Ultimately our goal as a City should be to stand united in the face of challenge and adversity and to collaborate and resolve issues. Not to point fingers and cast blame — especially in the form of rash, public commentary to the press which is wholly inaccurate,” Wilson said in her letter.
After City Councilor Delmarina López, who is running for mayor, revealed this month that the city had been continuing to pay health insurance premiums for retirees who died and employees who had resigned, Vieau and other department heads said they learned about the error at least eight months ago and have been taking multiple steps to correct it.
The day the error was revealed publicly, Auditor Sharyn Riley said the human resources department was in charge of regularly reconciling the bills for medical insurance. Vieau said on Tuesday that was said in error.
More research showed that human resources, the treasurer’s office, the school department and the auditor all have some responsibility for benefits and no one was actually reconciling the bills for years, which has led to the payment of benefits for people who are no longer eligible.
No one is certain how long the problem has been continuing or how much money was spent unnecessarily. Vieau said errors have been found dating back at least five years and employees are painstakingly reviewing every list and removing ineligible people when they find them.
“We have a professional team at HR (human resources),” Vieau said. “I’m not going to point fingers and blame people, I value all our employees.”
But Wilson said in her resignation letter that she didn’t see it that way.
“The budget for the monthly vendor bills does come from the Human Resources budget. However, the Human Resources department does not receive the bills. We do not authorize payment of the bills. We have not been responsible for reconciling the bills on a monthly basis in order to determine and correct the unintended charges. That is where every entity’s errors would be detected and able to be corrected,” Wilson said in a written statement. “There is a fiscal responsibility on the part of the City to make sure that the bills issued to the City are accurate before issuance of payment.”
“It is insulting and absurd to publicly shame a fellow department in this manner despite having full knowledge that the process and access to these elements of the benefits function is housed elsewhere,” she added.
The day the error was revealed, Auditor Sharyn Riley said the human resources department was in charge of regularly reconciling the bills for medical insurance. Vieau said that was said in error and he did talk to human resources employees after to tell them he appreciated and valued the work they were doing.
More research showed that human resources, the treasurer’s office, the school department and the auditor all have some responsibility for benefits and no one was reconciling the bills for years, which has led to the payment of benefits for people who are no longer eligible, he said.
“I believe everyone thought it was happening in a different department,” he said. “I’m not trying to point fingers. I will say about the human resources staff and the financial team care about every tax dollar.”
Vieau said the problem dates back well before he took over as mayor in January 2020. An outside firm, Employers Association of the NorthEast, has been hired to do the painstaking job of reviewing the books to ensure benefits are only being paid for current employees, retirees and their dependents.
No one has benefited by the error and there is nothing criminal about the mistake, he said.
One of the reasons for the confusion is the human resources department has been in turmoil for years. The city has struggled to keep a director over several mayoral administrations and the most recent three have left the position in less than two years. At one time the department was so short-staffed that different jobs it normally would have done were transferred to other departments, Vieau said.
In her resignation letter, Wilson referred to the revolving door of employees as a problem.
“When the volume of turnover in a department is this significant over the last two decades, it is time to look internally and consider what action(s) and/or inactions are causing this. This is not the norm for the human resources field,” she said.
For now, Vieau said he is formally serving as human resources director but the remaining employees are handling day-to-day operations with the assistance of Richard Merchant, who retired as director of the department years ago but has worked as the acting director in a part-time capacity off and on as directors have come and gone.
When Director Paul A. N. Winspeare resigned about a month ago to head the human resources department for Providence, R.I., the city advertised a new director and received some 200 applications, Vieau said.
Vieau said multiple candidates are well-qualified for the post, which was advertised with a salary of $101,000 a year. Final interviews are scheduled for the upcoming week and Vieau said he plans to make an offer by Friday.
The department has a total of seven positions and Vieau said he is planning to beef that up with two more. A training officer position was included in the fiscal year 2024 budget and he now wants to add a second benefits manager.
Winspeare, who was reached after he left the position, said the biggest problems are a lack of communication between the departments and an antiquated computer system. The lack of technology meant much of the work with insurance benefits has to be done manually, which left the system vulnerable to errors.
When he brought up the need to improve technology, Winspeare said he was met with “pushback” from the mayor.
Wilson agreed that at least some errors could have been prevented by upgrading technology by using systems that already exist in the computer system the city already pays for and uses.
“In addition to regular reconciliations and audits, many more errors could have been prevented altogether with effective utilization of technology which has existed since at least the mid-2000s,” she said in her letter. “This is just one piece of how the department has been historically unsupported.”
Vieau said he had conversations with Winspeare about improving technology and continues to look at doing so, by either using the current system or adding new technology.
But first changing the computer system during the COVID-19 pandemic that took up most of his first term was not an option, especially since so many people were working from home. Then as pandemic restrictions were ending during his second term, at least two employees in the treasurer’s office resigned, leaving that department severely shorthanded.
Because making changes in the computer system would have impacted many city departments, especially the financial departments, Vieau said he decided to wait until the office was fully staffed so employees, who were already taking on extra duties, were not overwhelmed because they also had to learn a new computer system.
Vieau said he has always had an open door and is frustrated that López did not reach out to him before putting out the information about the errors. In turn, López has said Vieau should have made the City Council aware of the problems as soon as he knew about them.