By JONATHAN ZWEYGARDT, Hays Post
What was supposed to be a benign budget meeting Thursday ended with the Ellis County Treasurer getting escorted from the commission chambers.
After previously presenting the commission with drafts, each individual department head planned to present their budget to the commission.
After a brief question, Commission Chair Butch Schlyer pressed County Treasurer Lisa Schlegel on adding a new employee. The commission had previously asked that any department heads who were looking to hire a new employee to discuss it with the commission first.
Schlegell did not. In March, she elected to fill a position that had been vacant in her department for several weeks.
Schlyer contended that position was open for six months. During the conversation, Schlegel interrupted Schlyer several times claiming it was four months.
“Earlier in the year, we did ask that department heads and elected officials discuss personnel issues with us,” Schlyer said. “You decided not too.”
“You never asked me about the position,” Schlegel replied.
"I didn’t know you was hiring," Schlyer responded.
After Schlegel asked Schlyer, “Why are you asking now?” Schlyer said, “Because I don’t believe you needed the position and I’m going to ask the board to remove it.”
Schlegel then interrupted him and said, “You don’t know what my office does.”
“You have no bearing to make a statement that my office does not need that staff,” she said. “That’s an ignorant statement and is incorrect.”
Schlyer responded, “You’re being rude and disrepecful.”
To that Schlegel responded, “No you’re lying and you’re misrepresenting the facts. I’m standing up for myself. That’s not rude and disrespectful.”
Schlegel interrupted Schlyer several more times as he told the commission he wanted that position taken from the budget.
She then claimed he was threatened by a woman standing up to him.
Schlyer said in response, “I’m not threatened by any woman.”
Schlegel said, “We’ll sure you are. When you lie, misrepresent, call names yell and bully, that is disrespectful.”
Schlyer interrupted her and said, “you keep interrupting me so I’d appreciate it if you’d just shut up for a minute.”
Schlyer asked to board to remove the position for the treasurer’s budget.
To that, she said, “The position will not be removed.”
The position was budgeted in 2020, and Schlegel asked what had changed.
“I don’t believe you needed it because you went a long time without it,” Schlyer said. “You went through tax season without it.”
Schlyer added that she took her time to fill the position while other departments did not.
Schlegel said, “If you understood how the treasury functioned, you would understand that no treasurer is going to hire and train a new person in tax season.”
Schlegel went on to claim that Schlyer makes decisions on “non-fact (and) ignorance." While the moves she makes are based on “facts.”
She went on to claim that Schlyer has made “numerous, lies, mistruths and misrepresentations” about her since he was elected.
When pressed on what he has said, she did not provide any examples.
She then told the commission her expenditures for 2021 would be $515,000.
“That’s what its going to cost to operate the treasurer,” Schlegel said.
After Schlyer again told her that he doesn’t believe the treasurer’s office needs the extra position, she told him he does not know what he is talking about.
When Schlyer shifted the discussion to the treasurer’s advertising budget, she said she would not discuss it.
She then brought up her summer newsletter that she mailed out to residents of Ellis County. She said the money for those didn’t come from the advertising budget and said that two commissioners lied about it when they talked about it at a prior meeting.
“Which is completely ignorant,” Schlegel said, “and it breaches on stupid.”
Commissioner Dustin Roths, who addressed the newsletter at a prior meeting, asked where the funding for the newsletter came from. He was ignored.
At this time, Schlyer asked Sheriff Ed Harbin to the front of the chambers and had Schlegel escorted from the meeting.
“I’m tired of listening to this,” Schlyer said. “We’ll do her budget without her.”
When she asked why she was being escorted from the meeting, his answer was, “because you’re obnoxious.”
“You are disrespectful. And let the record state,” Schlegel said, “that you told me to shut up.”
She continued to yell as she was being escorted out of the meeting and said the number she gave them was going to be what it cost to run the treasury “whether you like it or not.”
Just outside the commission chambers, Schlegel can be heard yelling, “Butch, you’re lucky you had me escorted out because I have a lot of stuff here you don’t want the public to hear."
At that time, she was told that if she came back to the meeting she would be arrested for disorderly conduct.
The commission then proceeded to go through the 2021 budget request for the treasurer line by line.
According to numbers presented to the commission, from January 2019 through this year, the treasurer’s office only used 105 hours of overtime. That was minus one employee for the busy tax season.
“Right through her busy season tax season, she was an employee low, didn’t rehire and (then) rehired at the beginning of the year without requesting from us,” said Roths.
The commission agreed to not put that position in the 2021 budget, and Roths said this is the reason why they didn’t want to hire new employees if there wasn’t going to be a position available.
“It’s not fair to that employee,” Roths said. “What Ms. Schlegel did to that employee is not fair and who she decides to let go of next year is not fair.”
While going through more line items and made a list of questions for Sclegel to address at another time.
Some of the smaller items they trimmed were the amount of money set aside for tuition reimbursement, subsistence spending and ending a line item for employee incentives.
The commission also addressed a roughly $30,000 expenditure for bulletproof glass and chose to remove it from the budget.
Interim County Administrator Darin Myers said they aren’t really sure on the exact cost but wanted to make sure it was on the budget for approval.
Schlyer called the bulletproof glass “overkill.”
Roths said, “How bad do we have to be at customer service while people are paying their taxes to need bulletproof glass partisans between us and the person whose taking our money?”
Schlyer also called it an inconsistency to want bulletproof glass but remove security cameras in the office.
The commission discussed the current security camera setup within the treasurer’s office.
IT Director Mike Leiker told the commission that his department does have security cameras in the treasurer’s office with the recording equipment in the IT department. But Leiker said “recently” the treasurer had staff come and get the equipment.
He said while the cameras can be monitored in real-time, they currently cannot record. There are 20 cameras in the treasurer’s office, but only 18 are active because Schlegel had them disconnect two, according to Leiker.
Leiker estimated it would cost about $3,000 to get the system back to recording.
County Counselor Bill Jeter told the commission he has looked into this situation before and called it a “gray area.”
He said there isn’t any guidelines on placing camera’s in an elected official’s office, adding he couldn’t give the commission an opinion on what the outcome of the case would be.
Roths said, “Maybe it should be litigated. If Treasurer Schlegel would like to have a problem with us recording things in the treasury, that might be something we have to take up as litigation.”
“I believe we should be recording in the treasury,” Roths added, “for the safety of the treasury (and) for the safety of her employees.”
Jeter suggested the county look at installing cameras in the lobby in an effort to cover the front of the treasurer’s office.
Roths said he would be worried about fraud and mistakes in transactions.
“Those are the type of things I would expect, from my treasurer, to want to know.”
Roths said he would be in favor of zero-funding the treasurer’s capital outlay budget so the office doesn’t have the funds to do any construction on the office.
The commission also walked through the EMS and Health Services Budgets, and budgets for the county attorney, appraiser, sheriff and IT.
They will continue budget discussions Friday.