It is impossible to watch last week’s county commissioner meeting without recognizing that there are major problems in our local government. It can be difficult to follow the video because it isn’t immediately apparent what reports are being discussed, some of the payroll terms can be a bit obscure, and it isn’t clear that Commissioner Tran knows what data he says didn’t copy over. After talking to several people at the county, below is my best understanding of what happened, along with my conclusion about the necessary next step.

In 2025, the county commissioners decided to stop having the county clerk’s office do payroll and instead outsource it to PayEntry through the reseller, Emerson & Co. The commissioners also hired Laura Krom to be responsible for administering the PayEntry payroll system as well as providing administrative support for the commissioners in other ways.

As part of the setup process, existing payrolls in 2025 were copied from the existing CIC system to the PayEntry system. That way PayEntry would have all the data to run reports for the full year of 2025. Without this import, PayEntry would not be able to produce the reports, including the W2 tax forms, at the end of 2025 because it wouldn’t have the data from the period when the other system was being used for payroll.

Each year, part of the payroll responsibility is to provide reports to the workers’ compensation insurance company. These reports are used to audit the workers’ compensation information from the previous year, and the process is used to set the rate that the county pays for workers’ compensation in the coming year.

Before the recording started at last Monday’s meeting, there was evidently some type of conversation (or disagreement) between the commissioners and the clerk over a report. According to the clerk, she then went into PayEntry (the system administered by the commissioner’s assistant, Laura Krom), printed out the report in question, and gave it to the commissioners. This is the report that Tran mentions having received in the video.

I’d encourage you to watch the full video of the meeting, but here are the two minutes most relevant for our discussion.

Here is my walk-through of what seems to be happening. However, my final conclusion is based on a wider range of possible facts.

Commissioner Tran claimed that a report that the county clerk had given the commissioners 5 minutes before the meeting had been requested by the commissioner’s assistant and new payroll administrator, Laura Krom, weeks earlier. Clerk Susan Walker says that wasn’t the case and that Krom had asked her to do the Worker Compensation audit, which Walker declined to do since it is the role of the new payroll administrator.

Tran goes on to ask that Laura Krom be given access to PayEntry (which she administers), then corrects himself and says CIC (which Clerk Walker administers). Walker tells Tran that if Krom uses the old data in CIC, it will not give Krom the correct information she needs for the Worker’s Compensation report. She then explains how to run the correct report in PayEntry to accomplish the goal. Tran then says the Karma (from the workers’ compensation insurance company) had said that the “information that Laura is getting from [the clerk’s] office is not the information [Karma] needs.” Walker says that there was no information provided to Krom from her office other than the 941 reports (a quarterly IRS payroll report), and that what Krom provided Karma was a report that Krom had created in PayEntry on her own. Walker goes on to say there is another report in PayEntry that was built to do what Karma is asking for—it just has to be run with the correct parameters.

At this point, Tran starts laughing. He says whatever he is laughing at is the opposite of laughing at Walker. Walker expresses her frustration with the situation, says she’d be happy to help show Krom how to run the report if Krom would just come in and ask for help with it, but that, instead of asking for help, there are a bunch of “backdoor conversations accusing me of things that I’m not doing.” At this point, Tran utters his infamous, “Are we talking about your feelings again? ‘Cause I’m not here to talk about your feelings, I’m here to talk about facts.”

Words are being said, but communication is not happening. How could it have played out differently? Tran clearly has no idea what Walker is saying when it comes to the reports he is asking for. And that’s okay. He may not have any experience with running payroll, but that means that no matter what Walker says, he doesn’t have any way to know if it will solve the issue or not. However, the commissioners hired someone whom they believe is the best person to run the payroll system for Bourbon County, Laura Krom. Tran indicates that Laura Krom had just been out there before the recording started when he said, “Laura came out here, and I asked her point-blank what she needed.” Unless she left the meeting, she is apparently sitting right in the next room, but not participating in the conversation at this point.

Walker says that Krom just needs to log in to the PayEntry system and run the workers’ compensation report with the correct settings, which she describes for them.  Now, maybe that would resolve the entire issue. Maybe it wouldn’t. Tran doesn’t know enough about the payroll system to know either way. So what options did Tran have at this point? He could:

1. Start laughing in a way that seems strange and inappropriate.
2. Ignore the easy-to-validate information Walker has just presented him with while claiming he is just there for the “facts.”
3. Ask Krom to run the report and see if it provides what she needs.

Inexplicably, he chooses to do both 1 & 2, but not 3. Apparently, using the information he has just been provided to try to solve the stated problem is neither in his skill set nor part of his desired course of action.
So how could it have played out if Bourbon County had a different chair of the county commission? What if we had someone with the leadership skills or problem-solving experience to say, “Let’s try running that report then”?

If Walker is right, Krom runs the report, and 60 seconds later, the confusion is solved, and the meeting moves on. Karma at the insurance company gets what she needs, and everything runs smoothly. On the other hand, if the report doesn’t give Krom what she needs, the county has still made progress. In that scenario, it should be very easy to see the source of the confusion, rectify it, and move on with what is needed.

Regardless of which way you think things would have gone had they tried to run the report, Tran’s behavior in this situation is 100% the opposite of what our county needs. The fact that he clearly doesn’t understand payroll enough to know what he is asking for can be excused. Commissioners can’t be experts on every single detail of the county.  What is not excusable is the fact that there is a very simple path forward to achieve the goal and resolve the situation that might take only a minute or two. He completely ignores this path and instead plows ahead, using his position as chair of the county commission to create an entirely avoidable self-inflicted debacle.

It is hard to overstate the magnitude of the core issue here. This doesn’t fall into a trivial “misunderstanding”. Monday’s meeting was a catastrophic failure of foundational leadership by the chair.

Imagine Tran sitting in the driver’s seat of a car that is accelerating toward a cliff. He tells the passenger the vehicle needs to be slowed. The passenger, who has way more experience in motor vehicles, says, “all you need to do is take your foot off the gas pedal.” The first thing Tran should do is take his foot off the gas pedal to see if the suggested solution works. If the passenger is wrong and it doesn’t help, they can immediately move on to try something else. If the passenger is right and it does help, then he now has a solution to the problem.

What if Tran applied the same course of action as what we saw in the Commission meeting? Well, he’d keep his foot firmly pinning the pedal to the floor and laugh. Then he’d say, “Are we talking about your feelings again? Because I’m not here to talk about your feelings, I’m here to talk about facts.” All the time, he’d have the gas pedal floored, completely ignoring the information he was just given that might actually help resolve the situation. Bourbon County needs leadership that can use the information presented to ask for the next reasonable step forward. This appears to be a skill that Tran either lacks or chooses not to use.

I’ve seen many calls on Facebook for Tran to resign over this incident. The optimist in me wants to think may still be a role Tran can play that serves Bourbon County, perhaps even continuing as a County Commissioner. However, my optimism does not extend to his position as chair of the commission. The last meeting made that clear. That chair position minimizes his ability to draw on his strengths while magnifying his weaknesses. Based on what we saw in the last commission meeting, I personally feel that any continuation of his role as the Chair of the Bourbon County Commission will cause greater harm in the future. He should resign from the chair immediately.

Is my reasoning sound, or did I make a mistake in my logic? I’d love to hear your concurrence or disagreement.

Mark Shead

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A Message After Last Night’s Bourbon County Commission Meeting

After sitting through last night’s Bourbon County Commission meeting, I feel I need to speak up.

As elected officials, your first and most important duty is to serve the public. Your second is to work respectfully and cooperatively with your fellow elected officials. And your third is to be transparent and honest with the people you represent.

Unfortunately, our current commission is failing in all three areas. The lack of respect, cooperation, and professionalism has become obvious. I hear the word “team” used often, but there is no real team — only three commissioners, their county counselor, and an outside HR consultant.

The way some of these officials treat others, especially their peers, is disrespectful. It’s not how local government should function.

I want to make something clear: I didn’t personally know our Clerk, Treasurer, Register of Deeds, or Sheriff until I joined the Budget Advisory Board. But it didn’t take long to notice that personal issues between the commissioners and these other elected officials are preventing real progress in our county.

I’ve talked with a lot of people about this. The majority are unhappy with the lack of respect, lack of transparency, and the misuse of authority. Many have even told me they preferred the previous commission — the same one these current members fought so hard to replace.

If we want Bourbon County to move forward, we must work together. We must be transparent. We must stop silencing others and start listening to the people who know how county government operates.

The treatment of the Treasurer, Clerk, and Deputy Clerk at last night’s meeting was unacceptable. I want to personally apologize to those individuals for the way they were spoken to.

Our Clerk has a wealth of knowledge and experience in city, county, and school government. The Budget Advisory Board said more than once that this commission could succeed — if they would simply work with her instead of against her.

Our commissioners also need to start working with our Sheriff and EMS departments, not against them. These are two of the most vital departments in our county. They’ve repeatedly come before the commission asking for tools and resources to do their jobs, only to be pushed further down the agenda each week.

We can’t keep dragging these meetings out while our first responders go without. It’s time to make clear, informed decisions based on facts and expertise, not personal feelings or politics.

At the next meeting, I’d also like to hear directly from the Deputy Clerk, the Clerk, and the Treasurer in response to Mr. Emerson’s comments last night — comments they were not allowed to address.

I would like to know what other counties Mr. Emerson has helped go through this process, from his remarks (and what I’ve researched myself), he doesn’t seem to understand how our county’s systems actually function. The people who do this work every day deserve a chance to speak publicly about how these proposed changes affect them.

From what I’ve learned through the payroll office, this new process isn’t saving us money, time, or effort — it’s adding work to an already overburdened and understaffed office. And the fact that the commission tried to push this change during an election says a lot about their lack of understanding of how government truly works.

I’m also concerned with the number of executive sessions this commission holds is alarming. Almost every meeting includes multiple closed-door discussions, usually listed as “non-elected personnel.” But the only non-elected personnel under their direct authority are the Public Works Director, EMS Director, and County Appraiser.

So are we to believe all these sessions are only about those three individuals? It doesn’t add up. These closed meetings are happening far more often than anything we ever saw from the last commission, despite all the criticism those former members received.

At the end of the day, if we want this county to succeed, we need leadership that’s willing to put in the time, do the work, and respect the process. Being a county commissioner is not part-time job. It takes commitment, study, preparation and cooperation.

If the people of District 5 choose to write me in and elect me, I promise a complete turnaround — in transparency, respect, and professionalism.

All of our elected officials are Republicans, and we should be working together — not tearing each other down. This infighting is why our party struggles nationwide.

This is our home. And I refuse to sit back and watch it fail because of ego, disrespect, and personal politics.

-Joe Smith

Write-In Candidate for District 5 Bourbon County Commissioner