County votes to curtail credit card usage

By Soncirey Mitchell
Reader Staff

The Bonner County board of commissioners voted Oct. 29 to pare down the county’s 60 credit cards, which are spread out across multiple departments, with the eventual goal of consolidating them into 30 cards. Each card has an available balance of up to $5,000, allowing holders to make purchases without prior approval from the board.

The Clerk’s Office audits all 60 cards each month, but only after the fact, allowing for some “frivolous spending,” according to Comptroller and Deputy Clerk Jessica Stephany.

The commissioners, county department heads and members of the public met Oct. 28 for a public workshop where they went through every card to determine whether to cancel it, reduce its available balance or leave it be.

Bonner County Commissioners Asia Williams, left; Ron Korn, center; Steve Bradshaw, right. Photo by Soncirey Mitchell.

“The purpose of this is to ensure that we have good internal controls and that the cards we have are reasonable and appropriate for the organization,” said Chair Asia Williams.

Throughout the discussion, officials were required to justify the continued use of their department’s card or cards. Several departments, such as Human Resources, surrendered their cards. Others, like the Prosecutor’s Office and Sheriff’s Office, were allowed to maintain multiple cards to make the real-time payments necessary for their offices to function.

Commissioner Steve Bradshaw, present on Zoom, called the process “micromanaging something that’s never been a problem, and it will become a problem if people are surrendering cards.”

He argued that relinquishing cards would create a surplus of work for the Clerk’s Office, which would assume control of all purchases under $5,000 for those departments.

“What we’re trying to do is eliminate the fact that the county has almost 60 open credit cards for a 400-employee agency. I don’t know that we need that much autonomy,” said Stephany, later adding that auditing the cards monthly already creates “a literal ton of work.”

Aside from a few real-time payments, the cards are used to pay for training resources such as tuition for programs and the travel expenses needed to access certain classes.

“We’re losing a little bit when each individual department buys their training on their own — then the organization as a whole doesn’t see that we have these memberships, and that’s not a good way of doing it,” said Williams.

She further argued that the commissioners should surrender their cards because their airfare, lodging and training workshops are already booked through the Clerk’s Office. Commissioner Ron Korn elected to keep his cards in case of emergencies while traveling when it would be difficult to contact the clerk.

Although Commissioner Steve Bradshaw stated that he’s never personally used his card, he argued that he needed to maintain it because “when you get to the hotel, you have to hand them the credit card.”

Of the commissioners, only Williams surrendered her card.