Alamance County’s commissioners may be having some second thoughts about a recent decision to continue paying sheriff’s deputies, paramedics, and other emergency shift workers their usual hourly wages when they’re scheduled to clock in on holidays.
The commissioners had previously vetoed an increased holiday rate for these “emergency services” employees after the county’s former HR director had mistakenly started issuing them a higher rate for holiday shifts without the explicit consent of the county’s governing board.
Although the commissioners agreed not to “clawback” the nearly $500,000 that the HR director’s gaffe wound up costing the county, they stopped short of ratifying the elevated holiday rates when the matter was brought to their attention at their annual budget retreat on February 17.
But now, after letting things stew for another four weeks, a newfound spirit of generosity seems to be gathering steam among the five-member board of commissioners.
The first sign of this potential change of heart arose Monday night when the commissioners were slated to consider a proposed clarification of the county’s policies on holiday pay.
The board had originally instructed county attorney Rik Stevens to draft this policy restatement when they addressed the former HR director’s blunder at last month’s budget retreat. At the time, the commissioners resolved to make it clear that the only holiday-related perk they’ve actually authorized is the regular payouts of “banked” holiday pay, which with emergency services employees have traditionally been credited whenever their shifts happen to fall on any the county’s 12 recognized holidays.
The board had initially agreed to cash out these credits last March – only to have Cheryl Ray, the county’s former personnel director, misconstrue their intentions and combine the payouts with higher rates of pay for staff members who actually came into work during the holidays. This change, which took effect when the fiscal year that started on July 1, ultimately wound up costing the county $470,000 before the commissioners put a halt to the overpayments at last month’s retreat.
The anticipated approval of this clarification on Monday was supposed to have been the final word on the issue of holiday pay for emergency shift workers. Yet, when the item came up during that evening’s proceedings, John Paisley, Jr., the chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, urged his colleagues to put off the matter in light of the numerous tweaks that he and his colleagues have apparently proposed to the county attorney.
“I’m going to move that we table this until our next meeting,” the board’s chairman added, “and give Mr. Stevens and his staff attorney time to modify the existing last draft.”
Stevens received some additional guidance on these potential changes as the commissioners haggled over Paisley’s proposal to postpone their vote on the policy.
As this conversation continued, a few members of the board found themselves lingering over some remarks they had heard earlier that evening from Henry Vines, a one-time candidate for the board of commissioners who addressed the board during a designated public comment period.
During his time at the podium, Vines urged the board’s current members to consider higher pay rates for staff members who are slated to work when most of their colleagues get the day off.
“I think the policy we’re looking at needs to be reformed, and it doesn’t need to go back to what we were doing,” he declared. “I would like to see this policy changed so that employees, when they work on holidays, they get paid double time.”
During the subsequent discussion, commissioner Ed Priola harked back to this recommendation from the erstwhile candidate for the county’s governing board.
“I like what Mr. Henry Vines had to say,” Priola went on to concede. “I’m not settled on it. But we should perhaps be paying upfront in the same paycheck. . . [because] it has better motivation.”
In the meantime, sheriff Terry Johnson assured the commissioners that, in his own experience as a career law enforcement officer, extra holiday pay can be worth far more to an employee than its raw cash value may indicate.
“If you couldn’t be with your family [because you were working],” he said, “it was good to have money for when you could be with your family [later on].
Alamance County’s manager Heidi York reminded the commissioners that the prospect of increased compensation was never part of the board’s original directive to her and Stevens in the wake of the holiday overpayment fiasco.
“The attorney and I were instructed to clean up the previous policy that had been put in place by the previous HR director,” she added. “We were not instructed at the time to come up with something new…and we do not have a budget to pay over regular time right now, so we would have to do some analysis to see where this money would come from.”
York went on to assure the commissioners that the county has sufficient funds from vacant positions to cover the $470,000 in holiday overpayments that the board had previously agreed to absorb. This confirmation that the overpayments won’t put a pinch on the county’s current budget spoke directly to previous assertions from Priola that he wants to make sure the county’s taxpayers don’t cough up more money to cover the former personnel director’s mistake.
Meanwhile, Stevens told the commissioners that, in view of Priola’s willingness to entertain higher holiday pay, he will return to the board with some additional proposals for the policy clarification.
Stevens indicated that one of these options will suggest a higher rate of compensation for holiday work.
