The cybersecurity incident that prompted Hilltop Bank to unplug its primary and backup systems and shutter its branches this week sent Bar Nunn Mayor Peter Boyer into brainstorming mode.
The town runs payroll though Hilltop, and employee pay was due Friday.
Hilltop’s shutdown became highly public Wednesday. That was roughly a day after the bank started seeing damages to its system. And it was hours after the bank discovered, just after midnight as Wednesday began, that a “cybersecurity incident” was at fault.
As of Thursday, some branches were open for limited business and customers could still use their debit cards for up to $1,000 per day, but the shutdown largely persisted.
Mayor Leah Juarez, of Bar Nunn’s neighboring town of Mills, floated the idea Wednesday of helping with payroll, Boyer told Cowboy State Daily in a Friday phone interview.
“She offered, ‘We could probably cover you guys’ payroll, and you could just reimburse us whenever everything gets rolling again,’” Boyer recounted. “I thought it was a very generous offer.”
Boyer said he ran the idea past his own council, and Juarez said she’d run it past hers.
“One of her council members disagreed with the premise of it and didn’t believe that possibility was even legal, which it is,” said Boyer. “And the whole thing got torpedoed.”
Mills City Council president Brad Neumiller told Cowboy State Daily in his own Friday interview that he disagreed with it and spoke to two other council members who also disagreed with the move.
“I don’t think this is what I’d consider an emergency, for an emergency meeting,” said Neumiller.
Mills had scheduled an emergency meeting for 1 p.m. Friday, which was cancelled.
Those can get costly on their own, Neumiller noted.
“If it was a true emergency meeting, we’d have to have another one in 48-72 hours,” he said. “And that constitutes $1,600 to $2,000 for meetings – over something that the council didn’t want to do in the first place.”
Neumiller and Juarez are running against each other for the mayor’s seat in the Nov. 3 general election.
A tangential issue emerged: Some Mills employees bank with Hilltop and couldn’t process their pay.
Neumiller said this part of the controversy surfaced after council members’ initial discussions about whether to help Bar Nunn.
“After (the meeting was scuttled) I’ve received emails saying it was not just for that. it was also for the City of Mills’ employees,” he said. “I have no issue there. There’s no reason we need to have a meeting for those payrolls.”
He said in the city’s strong-mayor style of government, Juarez could arrange switching checks to paper without an extra meeting.
Juarez did not immediately return a voicemail request for comment, but she denied having the authority to cut paper checks without the council’s vote, in a Facebook volley with Neumiller on Friday.
Mills city attorney Pat Holscher did not return voicemails placed at his office and cellphone by publication, to settle that dispute.
Juarez also discussed the issue in a post from her political page, saying she is “disappointed” that without enough council support, “we are unable to offer assistance to the employees of Bar Nunn.”
She said she’s even more disappointed the council couldn’t come together to help its own employees in Mills, a premise Neumiller still disputes.
Jaurez’s statement says council member Tim Sullivan indicated he wouldn’t support the proposal for Bar Nunn, and council member Sara McCarty couldn’t attend the meeting.
McCarty confirmed Friday via email that due to short notice and prior obligations she couldn’t make it, but would be happy to attend later if the meeting were rescheduled, and cast her vote.
Sullivan did not respond by publication to an email request for comment.
But Then …
Boyer said he learned Thursday night that Mills lacked support for the special meeting to help Bar Nunn.
He worked with Hilltop personnel for a remedy.
At 8 a.m. Friday, Boyer learned from Hilltop that the bank would honor paper checks cut to Bar Nunn employees for Friday’s payday, he added.
That made the emergency meeting a moot point ultimately, he acknowledged, “but we didn’t know that at the time.”
Hilltop spokesman Bill Salvin confirmed in a Friday text to Cowboy State Daily that bank personnel spoke with Bar Nunn officials Thursday night and will honor employees’ paychecks.
“They can deposit them or they can cash them,” said Salvin.
Once In A Lifetime, Hopefully
Boyer said people have asked why the town wasn’t prepared for this incident.
“No one is really prepared for this,” said Boyer. “I’ve never, in my entire life, had something happen like this. I’m 46 years old. I haven’t experienced this … no one I know of has experienced anything like this where a bank shut the doors. Everything was shut down.”
Boyer added, “This is a once in a lifetime event, hopefully.”
He said the town is going to adopt some protective measures.
“We don’t need to go crazy over it, but we’ll add some security layers for us, as a town, that would help in the future,” he said.
State Of The Bank
The bank announced Thursday evening that five branches (Main Office, Downtown Office, MotorBank, Glenrock Office, and Cheyenne Downtown Office) would be open during regular hours for cashing Hilltop-originated checks, giving limited cash back on Hilltop-originated check deposits, and withdrawals and deposits.
“If a customer has a specific or unique financial need, we encourage them to come to one of our open branches. We will do our best to help them,” says a Thursday-evening statement via the bank’s temporary incident website, hilltopbankupdates.com.
Debit cards and select Casper ATMs are working as well, the site says.
“I want to reiterate that we will reimburse customers for any late charges or fees that they incur because this cyber incident prevented transactions from being completed,” adds the announcement, quoting bank President and CEO Darren Cantlay. “We are diligently and methodically working to recover our systems and get back online.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
