Bombshell: Human Resources Director Accuses Auditor of Encouraging Fraud

Update: Auditor Mark Splonskowski appeared on the KFYR Kafe on March 21st, 2025 to answer these charges:

The Burleigh County Commission meeting last night resulted in what is called “burying the lede” when Burleigh County Human Resources Director Pam Binder explained what has been going on in the county offices with regards to what should have been a simple process: getting W-2 tax forms out to election workers.

It was discovered in the last few weeks that folks who were election workers for the county in 2024 did not receive the proper paperwork to file their taxes.

It sounds like the problem got resolved in recent weeks, but this is one of the first illustrations in public of the turmoil behind the scenes that some of us have been hearing about for almost a year.

Below is video of the Burleigh Commission, Auditor/Treasurer, and Human Resource Director discussion over W-2 for election workers in full context:

Here is a transcript of what Burleigh County Human Resources Director Pam Binder stated last night about the W-2 situation:

I would like to tell you how that happened.

We did have a meeting back in April last year that said, if your election workers are getting close to $600 because that is the limit for the 1099, you need to let us know we need personal action forms, because we have to do I-9s.

We have to put them on as employees, and we have to do payroll. We have to do time keeping that was not done. So in February, I get emails from our auditor saying you need to put you need to get these employees W-2s.

They're not my employees. Payroll is done. Payroll is done on our last payroll once W-2s go out for employees before January 31 it's done. We can't undo anything. It's not like a general ledger system that you can adjust. Payroll does not adjust.

So we have no payroll records for these 32 individuals because I was never informed or given the right paperwork to put them on.

So what our auditor asked me to do is, in my opinion, commit fraud, because I do not have payroll records for these people, but yet, I was supposed to issue him a W-2.

Our system automatically issues W-2 and does the uploads to the IRS. It's an HTML files. It's not copies of the W-2. Uploads happen through HTML.

We do all of our stuff the legal way, through payroll. Everything was done.

This came along later. I can't help it that he didn't follow my directions.

I have the emails. I have an audio recording where he admits that, yeah, you told me.

Below is the Human Resource Director’s statement by itself:

This is a very disturbing revelation for a few reasons.

1. Issuing W-2s should be a simple and normal process.

2. Why does the auditor’s office have the power to hire employees but skip over using the Human Resources Department/Director when processing their hiring papers?

3. Shouldn’t all employees be run through Human Resources?

4. How does the county ensure it is not hiring people it should not be hiring if the Auditor is skipping normal processes?

5. Things have gotten so bad, staff now is regularly recording their interactions with the Auditor/Treasurer.

It seems like not only are the county commissioners constantly fighting the auditor/treasurer, but so are the employees. How long will county staff stick around and put up with this? How much will it cost taxpayers to replace staff that leaves?

When we add this to the accusations that official county actions on tax abatements are not happening in a timely manner, as Commissioner Woodcox states below, we see there are distinct patterns of certain obligations not being completed in a timely manner.

Public Hearing On Converting Office To Appointed Results In Shouting Match

In the video at the top of the page, you can watch the full hour long interaction between the County Commission and the citizens that showed up to the meeting.

This meeting, like the first one two weeks ago, resulted in a shouting match between members of the public and the commission.

Burleigh County Begins Hard Process Of Repair

The public is still legitimately demanding to see “the stack of papers” Commission Chairman Brian Bitner has been bringing to the meeting that documents many of the issues the commission has with the current auditor/treasurer.

Note: I’ve reached out to Chairman Bitner and asked if he would like these documents to make their way to the public online, and offered up this site as a vehicle to disclose those documents.

As I stated in my public comments two weeks ago, the public needs an explanation of what is happening in the county offices or else they are going to defend the auditor (often blindly) because they are not being told what is behind this move.

It is very clear there is enough blame to go around.

The commission allowed their concerns and conflicts with the auditor/treasurer to remain behind closed doors for too long in hopes they could resolve the problems without a big public fight.

It is also a matter of time before we see that more and more things are not getting done because the auditor/treasurer is spending all of his time defending himself.

It will be interesting if the statements by the Human Resource Director gives other staff the motivation to let their story be told.

Note: To that end, if any county staff wish to meet with me, and have their stories of what is happening behind the scenes recorded and distributed, I would offer to facilitate that process with this site. There are many rumors of what is and has been happening behind the scenes, and it is clear the commission does not really know how to go about getting that information out - it may, unfortunately, fall on the county staff to get their stories out so the public can know what is happening.

We may be getting to the point soon where the cheapest option is for the commission to offer the auditor/treasurer a golden parachute check to just go away.

Even then, the public should have a chance to vote on whether the process of picking an auditor/treasurer should be changed.