When Maria Walls, CPA first entered the Beaufort County Treasurer’s Office, it was in the midst of a chaotic mess. A former employee had just been charged with a massive fraud, stealing $210,000 from public funds.
Naturally, the office had a lot of ground to make up for in restoring trust – not just of the public, but of the rest of the county government.
“One employee was convicted, but everyone here was treated like a criminal. Everyone was polygraphed and it was a horrific work environment,” Walls said. “We had multiple internal control comments every year from the county’s external auditors. Once I got here, I cleared every one of them within 12 months.”
But Walls didn’t run for Beaufort County Treasurer simply to clean up messes. As someone who has taken a business-like approach to the fundamentals of government, she reinvented the office as a model of efficiency. Streamlining efforts from an overhaul of mybeaufortcounty.com that allowed for seamless payments to installation of self-service kiosks during the pandemic reflected a mindset that knew “government work” didn’t need to be a pejorative.
The results speak for themselves. Walls and her team earned a National Achievement Award in 2020 and again in 2024, County Executive of the Year, and SCGOP Local Government Award. Walls herself was awarded Thomson Reuters’ Office Holder of the Year twice, the only person to do so.
Treasurer Maria Walls, CPA, serving Beaufort County’s citizens since 2011
And yet, for all the admirable work she’s performed turning a disgraced office into a shining example of what government can deliver, it’s what comes next that has Walls truly excited.
“Out of everything I have ever done, our recent creation is something I’m most proud of,” she said. “There’s a verse that says, ‘Write down the vision so those who see it may run.’ So, we asked ourselves, ‘What are we here to embody?’ For us, that’s people serving people.”
That simple phrase, “people serving people,” became the defining vision for a document that Walls has rolled out for the entire team. Codifying not only the office’s core values and mission, it sets the tone for what that office’s culture can become. It also offers a road map that other government entities could potentially follow, emphasizing ownership, purposeful evolution, and serving with passion.
“I am so passionate about public service and defying the government stereotype. The fact is, we’re serving hundreds of thousands of customers and I can’t be everywhere all at once,” Walls said. “Our core documents, as we’ve come to call them, are the foundation of our team. They tell our team, and our customers, who we are.”
Beyond making a statement on the Treasury Department’s culture, the service document dictates a 360-degree approach that brings every member of the team together in mutual ownership of that culture. No longer based on rudimentary criteria such as attendance, appearance and grooming, and job knowledge, Walls’ approach demands that and far more, elevating the standards to something all of government should aspire to.
The leadership team at the Treasurer’s Office, trailblazers defying the government stereotype. Back row: Doris Bowers, Kimberly Chesney, Allison White, Tanya Ward. Front row: Jennie Stanek, Maria Walls, Jeff DeLoach
“Our team has evolved with purpose and it was time to raise the bar,” Walls said. “Our operating standards and performance measurements are now driven by our vision, mission, and values – not tasks.”
Embedded within the document are not only the vision, mission, and values of the office and the standard organizational chart, there are also a few key directives that reflect the evolution of Walls’ office.
Anyone who has ever sat through a corporate meeting that could have been an email can appreciate the structure outlined under “Meetings with Purpose,” delineating and categorizing what meetings need to happen and when. Whether it’s a huddle, a check-in, or a full team meeting, each is designed to meet its specific purpose, and to provide the best possible outcome for everyone involved.
“We don’t have meetings that are pointless. Every team leader has what we call a ‘check-in’ at least every month with each team member,” Walls said. “It’s a chance for us to ask, ‘How are you doing? Where did you see me be successful for you this week? Where did you see me fail you this week? What blind spots am I missing? What do you see that I might not be seeing but should be aware of? And most importantly, how can I help you?’”
Not just a place to work, the Treasurer’s Office invests in their team and workplace culture, leading to better services for citizens.
“Mistakes can destroy the public trust that we’ve worked so hard to restore over the past 13 years,” Walls said. “Because no one is perfect, and therefore is capable of mistakes, it’s important to ask ‘where might we have a blind spot?’ or ‘where might we have messed up in your eyes so that we can fix it?’ We have that desire to evolve – setting our team up to avoid problems in the first place, rather solve them on the back end.”
This new document also outlines a unique new aspect of Walls’ mission to “Evolve with Purpose,” upward- and downward-directed reviews that give each team member a chance to get the full picture of their own progress in that evolution.
“I don’t know of a single government agency that does 360-degree evaluations,” Walls said. “The county doesn’t do anything like this, so we created the process ourselves.”
It also provides a visual representation of the kind of efficient thinking that Walls has brought to the Treasurer’s Office, showing key metrics for the implementation of Auto Agent (a payment solution technology) and other projects, expected this year.
“We have quite a few owners that we call ‘bulk property owners,’ where they own 50 or more assets in the county that are being taxed, and getting a separate bill for each one,” Walls said. “We created the bulk property owner program to scale that down, and Auto Agent is going to automate a lot of that for us.”
These are the sort of forward-thinking solutions that Beaufort County citizens have come to expect from the Treasurer’s Office under Walls’ leadership. To see it written down is to gain a new appreciation for a new way to imagine government.
Want to see what Walls has created? Take a look at bit.ly/CoreDocs.
