A Lower Towamensing Board of Supervisors meeting turned explosive Tuesday evening when a candidate made accusations of fraud in regard to township employee payroll.

Terry Kuehner, who won the Republican ticket for a six-year term on the board of supervisors over Vice Chairman Jay Mullikin, said township employees are showing up late during their 40-hour workweek and they have not been receiving any penalties.

“I want to know why when people are late for work that they’re not reprimanded from a write-up or that they’re not docked 15 minutes when they’re late, yet they stay after the fact and charge time-and-a-half after the 40 hours. There is no time-and-a-half after 40 hours at any municipality, only in emergency conditions,” Kuehner said.

Kuehner said that this has been an ongoing issue for a number of years. He requested that Supervisor Connie Brown, who was not in attendance at Tuesday’s meeting, provide him all time schedule documents of township employees. He said he would do his own audit to submit to the auditor.

“You swore in under trust. You are liable as supervisors of this township for what they do. If this is going on it’s not my judgment call but the state auditor’s. It’s his place and we need a mandated audit on this township immediately,” Kuehner said.

Kuehner said that he had requested the timesheets in the past but had never received them. When Supervisors’ Chairman Brent Green asked if he had ever filed an open records request for the documents to the township, Kuehner replied that he had not.

“Then you’re not getting them until you do,” Mullikin said.

Green told Kuehner that the board had nothing to hide from him.

“We will provide those records to you. We’re not hiding anything. Provide us a day’s notice and we will get those records and provide them to you. We will sit here while you go through them and you can look through all the records you want,” Green said.

Still, Kuehner continued to express that this was a pressing issue in the township.

“But my point I’m making to you, Brent, is that this is happening. They are charging overtime after eight hours and they’re late in the morning and their timesheets show this daily,” Kuehner said.

Kuehner said that someone would have to pay back the taxpayers.

“I already made a call to the auditor and I want to tell you something. If the facts show that they are charging overtime after eight hours and they’re late and they’re not docked 15 minutes or a half an hour or whatever it may be and they’re charging overtime for these years that went by, somebody’s paying back to the taxpayers,” Kuehner said.

Green explained that being late and working over scheduled hours was not in violation of the township handbook.

“So at this point in time I am not saying it’s not wrong to be late, but what you’re saying about being docked the minutes does not correlate with the punishment in our handbook,” Green said.

Ultimately, the supervisors decided that he could come to the municipal building and go over the timesheets later on in the week.