The N.C. Employment Security Commission has cited Kay Wright Norman on two misdemeanor violations, saying she has not provided employee information required by law.
Norman is a member of the Rowan-Salisbury Board of Education, but the violations concern her business, the Learning Curves Child Development Center.
Norman said this morning that the problem developed after the payroll firm she uses changed ownership. Allied Payroll Services became Advantage Payroll, and Norman said the president and regional manager of the firm are aware of the problem. She said the payroll company is offering to pay any penalties the state assesses.
“We have been doing everything we were supposed to do,” she said. “I have nothing to hide. We have gone through audits and everything. Everything in our agency is run exactly as it should be.”
After talking with state officials this morning, Norman said she also expects to show them her records this afternoon and resolve the case.
The criminal summons delivered to Norman on Tuesday says Norman, as executive director of the child development center, “did fail or refuse to submit true and accurate employment records” for each worker in the third and fourth quarters of 2000.
Norman said she employs five people in the center, located at the Dunbar Center on North Long Street in East Spencer.
Judy Garner, regional tax manager for the Employment Security Commission, said commission policy prohibits her from commenting on any case “because of privacy law and privacy issues.”
Speaking in general, however, Garner said the state requires most businesses to pay unemployment insurance tax and file employee records once a quarter.
The employment tax is paid solely by the employer, and “if employees later become unemployed through no fault of their own, it gives that person something to fall back on,” Garner said.
The amount an employee qualifies for depends on salary and hours worked, and so the state requires employers to file earnings reports no later than the last day of the month after the quarter ends.
So, the reports for the first quarter of this year, which ended March 31, would be due at the end of April.
Without that information, Garner said, “we don’t know how much to pay” people who are laid off — or whether they qualify at all.
Garner said the employment tax money is due at the same time, and that’s handled in “a whole different sequence.” Norman said she has the money ready when she knows the right amount to pay.
Garner said the cases are generally resolved routinely. “If it’s the first time it has occurred, all we want is to get that information,” she said.
The information is even more important in hard economic times, like now, when people are losing jobs.
At the same time, Garner said “a legal proceeding is our last resort.”
She said the employer first gets a notice in the mail two to three weeks after the reports were due. The employer gets another 10 days to two weeks to file the report.
If the reports still aren’t filed, state officials notify local Employment Security officials who “try to get that information by calling and/or visiting,” Garner said.
Only after that, does the agency “go the legal route.”
Garner said extenuating circumstances — such as a mix-up with a payroll firm — can happen, but added, “I will say that it is not a frequent occurrence.”
“The ultimate responsibility is with the business owner,” she said. “We will say to that person, ‘Just make the records available to us. We’ll make the report for you.’ We’ll let the person give us the information over the telephone.”
Garner stressed that she was talking in general terms and did not know the particular case a Post reporter called her about.
Norman said this morning that local officials in the Employment Security Office had not, until today, offered to look at her center’s books and help her file the report. She said she plans to take her records to the state office this afternoon to resolve the issue.
Norman said she also apparently lost some phone messages from the Employment Security Commission as she was moving into a new office on Bank Street. She said she had given a state official her home phone, but she never called.
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