PAYCOM DECISION TRACED TO 2021

PITTSFIELD -- The February 2021 Pike County Finance Committee minutes state that a Paycom representative gave a 30-minute presentation on the company’s finance software. The publicly available minutes reviewed for this story do not identify additional competing software proposals considered during that meeting.

One month later, during the March 17, 2021 Finance Committee meeting, board member Amy Gates made a motion to approve Paycom contingent upon funding from federal Recovery Funds. Mark Mountain seconded the motion, and it passed by a 7-to-0 vote.

The county’s previous CIC system was also experiencing problems during the same period. Official minutes record that County Clerk Natalie Roseberry informed the board of a recent CIC security breach and reported that the county had been unable to use the system for two weeks.

The timing places the CIC outage during the early stages of the Paycom transition. However, the public record reviewed by RiverNewsLive does not establish that the security breach was connected to the decision to adopt Paycom or that any wrongdoing occurred.

Problems involving payroll records and financial reporting continued after Paycom was implemented. In 2022, county officials publicly discussed payroll information not appearing properly in fund and budget status reports, difficulties moving years of payroll data between CIC and Paycom, and delays connected to audit work.

The issue remains significant because Pike County, Illinois has continued working through financial and audit concerns in recent years. County officials have acknowledged challenges involving delayed audits, borrowing to cover payroll and operating expenses, and the need for tighter oversight of county spending.

The original decision to adopt Paycom was made through public votes in 2021. As current debate continues, those meeting records provide the starting point for understanding how the county reached a payroll and financial reporting problem that has remained unresolved for years.