By CARRIE STAMBAUGH
CATLETTSBURG — The controversy surrounding the disappearance of a number of city documents in Catlettsburg has cast a shadow over the race for mayor.
At the center of the controversy are circumstances surrounding former City Clerk Pauline Hunt’s departure from office and her subsequent bid for mayor.
Hunt, 80, served as Catlettsburg’s clerk and treasurer for more than three decades. She served under nine administrations, including that of incumbent James Allen Lambert, also a candidate for mayor.
Lambert was mayor when Hunt left office and when a number of city records formerly in her care were discovered missing.
That’s where the agreement on the facts ends.
Hunt said she decided to retire from her post to run for mayor. She maintains the records were there when she left and said they weren’t discovered missing until after she filed as a candidate.
Hunt said she believes the documents were taken “to discredit me or conceal something.”
“I think I know,” she said when asked by The Independent’s editorial board who might have taken them, but she declined to comment further at the urging of her campaign manager and sister, Ann Bryan, also present at the interview.
Lambert, a former city council member, told a different story about why Hunt left her former post.
He said Hunt “got mad and quit” in part because of the city’s hiring of a deputy clerk.
Hunt has suffered two heart attacks over her last two years as clerk. The first occurred in October 2006 and the second in early 2008.
Both times, the city had no one prepared to step in and had to bring in outside help to run the city offices during her hospitalization, according to minutes of the Oct. 24, 2006, meeting and March 18, 2008, regular meeting.
The need for help
Following Hunt’s absence, the council began to see a bigger need for a deputy clerk, combined with the fact that for years the city’s audits had pointed out the single clerk as a weakness in its internal controls.
The official audits of Catlettsburg’s financial records have for years, including the 2007 audit, stated the city has “almost no segregation of duties due to the limited number of employees.”
Auditors in 2007 wrote, “Specifically, the Treasurer has duties relating to cash receipts, cash disbursements, payroll, bank reconciliations and all other accounting and recording activities.
“The best method of providing a good system of internal control is to create an adequate segregation of duties between employees. Ideally no one person should have complete control over an accounting transaction.”
Those two factors prompted city officials to take action.
According to the minutes of a special called April 8 meeting of Catlettsburg City Council, council members approved hiring a deputy clerk following a 25-minute executive session.
Officials at that time publicly told Hunt they were not trying to force her out of her job — they were just trying to get her some much-needed help and train someone in the position for the future.
To ensure an unbiased selection of the best candidate, the city council put together a search committee of city officials and residents to interview candidates.
They recommended the council hire Susan Harper Spencer in mid-May.
According to Lambert and others, Hunt immediately rejected Spencer.
“That is when she (Hunt) was going to quit. There was no cooperation whatsoever. She wouldn’t train her, wouldn’t give her a desk. Everyday it was something,” he said.
Hunt did quit, according to Lambert, but had enough years of service to retire.
However, Hunt said she retired to run for mayor and her family had asked her to retire for sometime. She said she had no resentment toward Spencer.
“I was glad to have help,” Hunt said.
She confirmed Spencer’s desk was placed in the foyer for a short time but not out of animosity.
“I had to put her there until we had to make arrangements, furniture that had to be moved out of my office. Within two weeks the desk was moved in there. When she first came there wasn’t any room,” Hunt said.
She said she officially left office July 31, two days after filing to run for mayor.
The last week of July, while Hunt was preparing to leave the office, Spencer went to municipal clerk training in Lexington. Immediately upon her return to the office she called in the state Department of Libraries and Archives to help her and the new deputy clerk organize the office.
“They came in and there was nothing to organize,” Lambert said.
“I don’t want to cause no trouble,” he said. “I don’t want an 80-year-old woman to get in trouble.”
Lambert said he’s known Hunt his entire life and agreed all her audits have always come back clean.
Lambert did not directly accuse Hunt of destroying the records but said three city employees have come forward to say they helped her to dispose of multiple trash bags — many of which appeared to be full of papers and files — the week she left office.
The Independent has independently verified the stories of two of those witnesses but only one was willing to go on the record.
Building Code Inspector Michael Hedrick, a former Catlettsburg police officer, confirmed he helped Hunt remove a number of bags from her office. He also said he had delivered boxes of items to former Mayor Donald G. Wellman’s home at the request of Hunt.
Hedrick said he thought he was helping Hunt and at no time looked in the boxes or bags believing he had no reason to do so.
Hunt said she sent one box to Wellman, which he requested, of items in a desk drawer.
Wellman denied he asked for the items.
“They just brought them to me,” he said.
Wellman characterized them as “copies of letters I’d written to legislators.” He said he still has the documents, which no one has asked him to return.
Hunt: Records
were there
Hunt has maintained all the appropriate city records were there when she left and she was not at all involved in their disappearance. The bags and boxes were personal effects she had collected over her years in office.
During her interview with The Independent’s editorial board she questioned if Spencer, whom she said had “no experience for the job” ... “recognizes what she is looking for.”
Lambert said the city has done everything in its power to locate the records and is trying to move forward.
The state Department of Libraries and Archives, along with the state auditor’s office and attorney general’s office, have all been notified, according to city officials.
No formal investigation has been conducted into what happened to the documents despite calls for one by Spencer and members of the public.
Questions remain unanswered about the extent of the documents that are missing.
In response to an open records request filed by The Independent, the city characterized the missing documents as financial records from 2005 including bank statements, bank deposit books, accounts payable, accounts receivable and some invoices for all bank accounts utilized on a daily basis. Audits for every year except 1991, 2003 and 2005 were also missing, although a copy is maintained by the city’s auditing firm. Employee manuals and files for the street, sewer and general office were also found to be incomplete.
There have also been indications that a number of older, historical records may have been lost.
CARRIE STAMBAUGH can be reached at cstambaugh@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2653.
