(Picture credit John Gage)
LINCOLN — Lancaster County Commissioner Matt Schulte held a press conference Friday morning where he urged the “removal” of Lancaster County Treasurer Rachel Garver as well as her deputy, Kristen Anderson, from office.
Schulte, a Republican, was joined by Republican Jasmine Gibson, who is running against Garver in the November election, as well as Republican Landon Parks, who is running against Anderson for clerk of the Lancaster County District Court. Garver and Anderson are Democrats.
Schulte said that Garver and Anderson had shown “failed leadership” in their roles following a report a week ago by Auditor Mike Foley, which had revealed the Treasurer’s Office had nearly $1 billion in accounting errors, just in the last year.
Schulte said Garver and Anderson were not taking the auditor’s report seriously, pointing to a follow-up letter Foley had sent to county officials. Foley said he had found it “disconcerting to listen to the reaction of county officials.”
“The comments seemed quite dismissive of the severity of what has now been disclosed,” he added.
Schulte said that in another job, a $1 billion mistake would get you fired “in a heartbeat.” “This is not a small amount of errors. That is a massive amount of errors,” he said. “We cannot have that sort of approach to our fiscal tax dollars.”
Gibson, who has 10-years of experience working in the Treasurer’s Office, said she was “shocked and disappointed and appalled by the lack of accountability” under Graver and Anderson’s leadership. She accused the pair of attempting to “minimize” the issues in the office.
Garver, for her part, has said that the billion dollar figure by Foley is misleading because it “created the appearance of nearly one billion dollars in discrepancies, which did not affect the distribution of property taxes.”
“It is important for taxpayers to know that our office did not misallocate anywhere close to a billion dollars in taxpayer funds or property tax credit money. The headline suggesting otherwise is misleading,” she said. “There was approximately three million dollars in over‑ and under‑payments. Those errors have been fully identified, corrected, and reconciled. No taxpayer money was lost, and all distributions have now been accurately aligned with statutory requirements.”
Schulte said he believes the problems goes deeper, noting that Foley’s office only looked at one year. He called on the auditor to look and see how far back the mistakes went, saying he believed it was more than just one year.
When asked by The Plains Sentinel if he believed Garver and Anderson should resign, Schulte said he would prefer Lancaster County voters give them the boot, although he said he is looking into other options for “removal.”
“There’s three ways someone like this can be removed from office,” he said. “Number one is by the voters. Number two is there is a judicial process where if someone is found guilty of a felony, and at this point there have not been charges. Whether or not there will be charges, I have no idea… and then the third process is that the Lancaster County Board actually has the option to remove a county treasurer.”
Schulte pointed to Sarpy County, which removed Treasurer Brian Zuger in 2021. Schulte said Lancaster County should “at least consider” the third option to remove Garver if her office did not continue to take accounting errors seriously.
Garver and Anderson did not immediately respond for a request for comment on the story.
— John Gage is the executive editor of The Plains Sentinel.