Board of Education Business Administrator Recovers Nearly $150k From IRS

Montville Township Board of Education business administrator James Tevis announced at the school board's meeting on August 31 that he was able to recover nearly $150,000 in fines from the IRS for the district.

"I want to congratulate Jim for all his hard work and continued effort on behalf of the district," Dr. Karen Cortellino, board of education President, said at the meeting.

For Tevis, the recovery of the money is the end of a five year process that started long before he began his tenure as business administrator on January 1, 2009.

"There has been a lot of transition in the administration over the last five years," he said. "The board of education has had four business administrators and four payroll administrators in five years. I'm already a seasoned vet."

According to Tevis, the district suffered from small tax issues going back as far as 2005, due to incorrectly submitted W2 forms and fines from not depositing payroll paperwork on time. However, it wasn't until his first quarterly report that he realized how much money the district was losing.

"I get to the end of the quarter and get my report, and I find that we got assessed another $150,000 in penalty because our payroll was not done correctly for three months," he said. "I have payroll experience, so I see what the problem is and I call everybody. I call the super, I call the board attorney, I called the IRS and I started working on appeals."

Tevis said that the error was due to a payroll administrator within the district not doing the job correctly. He fired the employee, who was hired before his time as business administrator, and took personal responsibility for the error.

"It was a miserable year," he said. "The oversight was not there, and it's my job to make sure that oversight is in place. I went out and did what had to be done and took responsibility. It wasn't easy."

Since then, Tevis has been working with the IRS to recover the lost money through appeals processes. Though not all of the money lost over the last five years could be recovered, Tevis said the nearly $150,000 that he was able to return to the district will go into funding the 2011-2012 school budget.

The district had its 2010-2011 budget cut by almost $1 million earlier this year.

"It's not millions of dollars, but, hey, we'll take it" he said. "Especially with the catastrophic cuts in state aid."

While having the money back in the district is a plus, for Tevis, it is encouraging to get a win after a difficult first year in what could have been considered as an unstable district.

"It's been a heck of a year," he said. "The board was very happy, with all this money coming back to the district. It shouldn't have happened in the first place, and I am very happy I could adjust it."

The next board of education meeting is scheduled for Sept. 21.