McKee fires Department of Administration director after another payroll system debacle

Rhode Island Department of Administration (DOA) Director Jonathan Womer will be stepping down from his post effective immediately, Gov. Dan McKee announced Friday afternoon.

McKee’s office released a statement that Womer tendered his resignation at the governor’s request. Womer’s exit after three years leading the department follows ongoing issues with the much-maligned rollout of the state’s new payroll system, including possible exposure of state employees’ Social Security numbers via tax forms sent by mail.

“Our employees trust the Department of Administration to handle their pay and personal information with the highest level of care,” McKee said in a statement. “This transition is about making sure state government is operating the way our employees and taxpayers expect and deserve.”

McKee’s announcement came Friday at 3:12 p.m., just 13 minutes after a separate news release from the Department of Administration declared the agency would be offering free credit monitoring to current and former state employees who received corrected W-2C forms after having received erroneous versions of the tax documents earlier this year. 

State workers to get new W-2s after old ones mislabeled ‘State of Rhode Island Umbrella Company’

The corrected forms were emailed on Feb. 25, but some may have had state employees’ Social Security numbers visible through the envelopes, the administration department said in its Friday release.

“The envelopes at issue were processed through the State’s centralized mailroom in accordance with standard mail handling protocols, and the mailings remained within the custody and control of authorized mailroom personnel until transfer to the United States Postal Service,” the release said.

The DOA did not have any evidence of unauthorized access to state employees’ private information, but it was still offering the credit monitoring “out of an abundance of caution.” The agency said it is reviewing mailroom protocols. 

Womer will be kept around for 60 days for consultation purposes, according to McKee’s office, while Department of Revenue Director Tom Verdi will step in as interim director until a permanent replacement is found. Verdi has been the revenue department’s director since 2023. He spent 35 years in the Providence Police Department before retiring as commander and deputy chief.

The multiple problems with state employees’ paychecks largely derive from the state’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system — a generic label for large-scale enterprise software projects as well as the specific sobriquet applied to a multiyear, $95-million-plus project upgrading Rhode Island’s state payroll system out of the mainframe era and onto the cloud. The new system, which has multiple financial functions for state government beyond payroll, relies on the software Workday. The state uses Accenture as the implementation partner for its ERP, including Workday. 

“We will continue working urgently to address these operational challenges, support our employees, and ensure the Department of Administration is delivering the reliable services that state government depends on,” McKee said in his statement, noting that the state will continue to improve the ERP’s functionality.

This is not the first season of bad publicity for the administration department under McKee. Womer was nominated by McKee to the DOA post in May 2023 after the scandalous exit of former director James Thorsen, whose lack of decorum during an official visit to Philadelphia in March that year grabbed national headlines. On Monday, the state ethics commission found “probable cause” that Thorsen violated ethics rules when he accepted a free lunch during his Philly visit. 

Womer previously served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget, a division of DOA,  from 2015 to 2021 when he left to become a senior advisor with The Policy Lab at Brown University. Prior to working in Rhode Island, Womer held administrative jobs in the North Carolina Governor’s office as well the University of North Carolina.