In a memorandum submitted today to the Kootenai County Commissioners (BOCC), County Assessor Bela Kovacs responds to accusations leveled by personnel in his office. This comes in the wake of an ongoing internal feud when the BOCC voted to cut Kovacs’ salary in half last year.
Kovacs claims there is an entrenched group of county employees actively attempting to “discredit” him while the BOCC followed suit by implementing punitive measures that have significantly diminished his ability to execute his statutory duties.
The problems begin with a problematic computer system implementation in 2004-2005. […] Those system failures were addressed by in-house solutions which only compounded the situation with in-house custom programming and manual work-a-rounds causing years of waste in public funds, property and manpower, and which have resulted in burdensome processes, delays, missed deadlines, a lack of uniformity and consequently violations, or suspected violations, of [the] law.
In summary, Kovacs’ believes the source of the turmoil are from various employees that aren’t adjusting well to the reforms being implemented at the Assessor’s office. Kovacs also believes neglecting these reforms will draw the county closer towards a catastrophic and significant financial disaster for Kootenai County.
There is an entrenched bureaucracy in Kootenai County, and especially among some long-term personnel, that does not want to own-up to the problems and they do not want change. They do not want these matters to be talked about openly and frankly.
Read the memorandum below:
