Human Services Board OKs exploring software attorney hire

HURLEY — The Iron County Human Services Board directed the department to join with other departments statewide in potentially hiring a software attorney to explore the possibility of the counties keeping the financial software they use.

The move comes as the county’s Human Services Department continues to explore options for its data/financial/general ledger software after it was announced recently the company making the current software — Visual WISSIS — was discontinuing the software.

Cally Kilger, the department’s director, said she has been unable to find a single software program that incorporates everything the current program does. She said she talked to officials at other counties that use other available software and they are unhappy with it.

“WISSIS is an all-encompassing package that we have not found anywhere else. It’s also something we’ve already paid for, we already have all our data from the last however-many years stored on it,” Kilger said. “I, for one, wasn’t aware how nice our system was until we had the threat of it being taken away and we had to look at another system.”

The retention of a specialized lawyer isn’t necessarily a given, as roughly 13 other counties are still gauging support for the idea. The goal of hiring an attorney would be to be better informed on the options available to the counties and the best way to proceed.

If the counties aren’t able to continue to use the software as it is, there are several other options that have been brought up.

Marquette County had approached the company about acquiring the rights to the software, Kilger said. She said this plan would possibly call for splitting the acquisition costs between the counties that wished to continue to use the program. The reported sale price would be approximately $360,000, according to Kilger, with a number of contingencies put in place that make the purchase less feasible for Marquette County.

Another option would be to find multiple software programs that together perform a similar function as Visual WISSIS.

More information on the path forward will become available once more county boards meet and provide direction on hiring the attorney.

In other action:

— Kilger reported that she notified the state of the charges facing Mary Tijan in connection to her time as the department’s financial manager, and the county will need to have a fraud audit completed. Kilger said this would be done after the law enforcement investigation wraps up and could take awhile. The purpose of the audit is to see what state money was involved and determine if the county must pay back any funds. The audit can be completed by the person doing the county’s forensic audit, Kilger said, which is good, as the county must pay for the service. Tijan is facing seven charges in connection with over $185,000 that authorities say Tijan illegally obtained while working in the department.

— A short public meeting was held prior to the board’s regular meeting to provide residents with the opportunity to comment on the department’s services.