Bean raise didn't follow procedure, officials say

Prescribed guidelines for awarding 1 percent merit pay increases to Hillsborough County executives were not followed when County Administrator Pat Bean gave the raise to herself in 2007.

Officials involved in choosing who receives pay increases say that, unlike previous awards, there were no nomination forms submitted for Bean and 10 other department heads who got the 1 percent increase that year. What's more, none of the award winners were vetted by an executive review committee.

County commissioners have criticized Bean for approving the raise for her and for County Attorney Renee Lee without their approval. The raises amounted to about $2,100 a year each. Bean makes $224,120 a year; Lee makes $212,721.

Bean has said she does not know who nominated her for the award. So far, no paper trail has emerged to explain the sequence of events despite public records requests by the media and members of the public.

Bean's former deputy, Wally Hill, says Bean decided to give the award to herself, an assertion she has denied. Hill was laid off last year and is now assistant chief operating officer for San Diego.

Top county managers who were close to the process say they are not sure how Bean's award came about.

"I don't know who actually started the discussion because there is no paper trail in writing on this," said Christina Swanson, a division director in Human Resources.

The reason no paper trail exists is that department directors were not asked to submit nomination forms for the pay raises, the established practice for this type of merit increase in previous years.

An Executive Position Review Committee, which had previously reviewed nominations, also did not meet. The committee included the deputy county administrator, three assistant county administrators and a nonvoting manager from the Human Resources Department.

Swanson and others say Hill pushed to reward department heads in 2006 who had answered Bean's challenge to save money through more efficient management and without compromising services. Altogether, the department heads saved $17 million in 2005 and 2006.

Hill first tried to get the department directors extra money through the county's Productivity Award Program, a one-time monetary award to recognize employees for suggestions that helped customers or improved efficiency. The award did not require county commission approval. It was rarely given to senior management, however, and the committee that approves award winners rejected Hill's request.

County budget director Eric Johnson accompanied Hill to the committee meeting.

"We were jointly disappointed that they told us it didn't fit in the box," Johnson said. "From our perspective, these were real savings."

Hill said Bean then decided to use the 1 percent merit increase, which the county had last given in 2004, to reward the employees.

Later, Johnson heard that he was among the department directors who were going to get 1 percent raises.

"I was a recipient and I wondered to this date how that had been orchestrated," Johnson said. "I thought it was Wally."

It would have been Hill's duty as deputy county administrator to convene the Executive Position Review Committee before going forward with the 1 percent raises for Bean, Lee and the other nine department heads.

Hill said he didn't convene the committee because there was nothing to discuss. Bean had already made the decision that department directors who had saved money through efficient management should get the 1 percent pay raises.

Hill was vague on who was in the meeting where the subject of Bean's raise came up, except he's sure he and Bean were there.

"We had the list in front of us of the department heads that had" saved money, Hill said. "Somewhere that led to a discussion: What about herself and what about Renee?"

Bean and Lee work under contract for the county commission, which put them in a different category than the department heads, who work for Bean. Both had shaved money from their offices' budgets, Hill said.

When Swanson, the human resources division director, heard Lee and Bean were going to get the pay raises, she asked Lee for a legal opinion. In an e-mail response, Lee wrote that the county administrator and county attorney were entitled to "other benefits" not specifically covered by their contracts but which are available to other county employees.

Bean is not commenting on the pay raise issue because it is being investigated by the state Ethics Commission. She has denied Hill's version of events in news reports.

Managers interviewed for this article say they doubt Bean decided to give herself the raise.

"There were some things that (Hill said) that didn't sound as some of us remember it occurring back in 2007," said George Williams, director of the county Human Resources Department, and a recipient of the 1 percent raise.

Swanson says she imagines Hill told Bean something like, "'We have this 1 percent ... and, by the way, we've got an opinion from Renee Lee that you are entitled to it. Do you want it?'"

Williams said Bean's mistake was not submitting her and Lee's pay raises to the county commission, which sets the pay for the county administrator and county attorney.

At the Jan. 25, 2007, county commission meeting, Bean recognized department heads who had won another honorary, the Extra Mile Award, which confers a certificate but no money.

Bean read the employees names, they stood and were applauded by commissioners and others in the board room. Bean didn't mention the 1 percent raises some of them were receiving starting that month.

"The thing that should have happened when all of us got paraded as Extra Mile Award winners, there should have been written documentation to the board," Williams said. "Board approval should have been gotten but that didn't happen."