If a cardboard box seems hard to come by these days, it may be the doing of Alamance County’s government, which has seen nearly 250 of its former staff members pack up their stuff in just over a year.
Since July 1 of 2023, the county’s departments and agencies have bid farewell to 249 employees – the vast majority of whom left of their own accord. To put this figure into context, the county’s most recent audit calculated the entire staff to comprise just over 1,100 “full-time equivalents.”
According to the county’s personnel office, the past 14 months have seen 24 staff members retire from the county’s employ and another 182 resign their positions. Two other staff members have died while on the county’s payroll, and four more were let go when their temporary positions expired. The county also fired another 27 staff members, and it declined to retain 10 new employees who were still in their probationary periods.
The county’s personnel office has indicated that these 37 former staff members lost their positions for reasons ranging from timecard discrepancies to falling asleep on the job. It also provided documentation for two former jailers who had been caught passing notes between inmates and for seven employees at EMS who were summarily terminated when they failed to complete some required training.
The personnel office has provided data on all of these departures in response to a recent public records request from The Alamance News.
The newspaper had previously made similar requests to several of the county’s cities and towns in order to obtain information about any demotions, suspensions, or departures which they had logged in the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2024. In the county’s case, The Alamance News asked for an additional two months of data since August was already in its final days when the newspaper tendered its request to Alamance County’s manager.
Under North Carolina’s Public Records Law, as well as state personnel statutes, state and local governments are obligated to release the names, salaries, positions, and dates of employment for everyone who appears on the payroll. The law also allows members of the public to obtain a public employee’s most recent change in status – be it a promotion, demotion, suspension, or separation. In the event that an employee’s separation is involuntary, the law further allows members of the public to receive the reasons for the staff member’s termination in the form of a final termination letter.
In its initial response to the newspaper’s request, the county’s personnel office provided a complete inventory of staff separations for the 14-month period that ran from July 1, 2023 to August 31, 2024. The personnel office also provided supplemental information like termination letters or disciplinary action forms for each of the 37 individuals who were either sacked or cut from the payroll at the end of their probationary periods.
Interestingly enough, most of the employees who received separation letters from the county had worked in one of the three departments that have struggled with persistently high vacancies. The department of social services accounted for 13 of these involuntary dismissals, while another seven were fired from Emergency Medical Services, and six more of these reluctant free agents were cut from the sheriff’s office.
In the case of the sheriff’s office, a perennially large number of openings recently prompted Alamance County’s commissioners to approve “signing bonuses” of $10,000 for new recruits who remain in the sheriff’s employ for no less than 22 months. Yet, in spite of the sheriff’s travails with turnover, his agency’s top brass were willing to risk some additional vacancies in order to get rid of the following staff members:
See sections on firings at:
Sheriff’s office (6): https://alamancenews.com/part-2-sheriffs-office-captain-jailers-among-those-dismissed-for-fudging-their-hours-of-work/
Social Services (13): https://alamancenews.com/part-3-social-services-time-clock-violations-again-exaggerated-resume-and-falling-asleep-on-the-job/
EMS (7): https://alamancenews.com/part-4-ems-personnel-fired-for-not-completing-mandatory-training/
