The Pulaski County Quorum Court amended its employee policy on Tuesday after an 11-4 vote, removing the option for county department heads or elected officials to allow their employees to take "comp time" for overtime hours worked in lieu of overtime pay.
Previously, employees who worked more than 40 hours in a week could accrue those additional hours to take paid time off if permitted by a director. As amended, the policy now will require all of the roughly 1,200 employees countywide to be paid time and a half for each additional hour worked over 40.
Opponents of the amendment, including County Clerk Larry Crane and County Treasurer Deborah Buckner, argued that that the option of awarding comp time can give flexibility both to department directors and employees who may opt for the paid time off rather than the extra hourly rates.
"As an elected official, why are we closing the door on options?" Buckner asked during the Quorum Court's initial discussion over the item earlier this month. "This eliminates flexibility."
Each county department is budgeted a certain amount for overtime pay by the Quorum Court at the beginning of every fiscal year. Recently, Crane's office has dedicated roughly 450 extra man hours to correcting flawed voter-registration data that erroneously identified thousands of registered voters as felons. And with the demand the general election will put on his office, he's wary of any other unexpected pressures that might require more overtime hours.
"This takes away a management tool for dealing with the unexpected," Crane said.
"We need those bodies there taking care of the election. We don't need to be walking around saying, 'you've worked all your time, go home,'" Crane said.
Currently, each department mandates comp time, overtime pay, or a mixture of both.
However Justice of the Peace Donna Massey, the item's lead sponsor, wanted to create a consistent rule that ensured employees were getting the overtime pay they earned. According to her, the county began offering comp time when coffers were low and overtime pay was difficult for the county to afford.
Now, she says, the county is more financially sound.
In accordance with Department of Labor regulations adopted earlier this year, the policy will apply to all hourly employees and all salaried employees with incomes less than $49,000 per year.
The Pulaski County Personnel Task Force, established last spring to rewrite the county's personnel policies, initially was directed to iron out compensation policies. But Massey, who is one of two Quorum Court members on the task force, felt that the panel deadlocked over the matter and it should be expedited to the top governing body.
"We are getting bogged down into a major discussion on comp time," Massey said during initial discussions earlier this month. "I think we'd be here this time next year discussing the policy, because it's so antiquated and it's taking us a long time."
But many Quorum Court members admonished her for going around the task force against procedure.
The Quorum Court had remanded the decision to the task force, but on Tuesday a majority vote had the body revisit the item.
"Why form a task force if you're going to pick out the core issues and bring them to the Quorum Court," asked Justice of the Peace Tyler Denton.
Pulaski County Clerk Chief Administrator Steve Kelley, who is also a member of the task force, was surprised to see that the item was taken from the task force's purview.
"I was frankly surprised to see this ordinance introduced," Kelley said. "I'm disappointed to see that [ Justice of the Peace Phil] Stowers and Ms. Massey don't feel like we're doing our job."
"What we hear consistently is that our employees don't make enough money," Massey said. "I personally believe that we provide adequate vacation time -- we enhanced that policy a year or two ago -- we provide adequate sick leave. We provide a lot of paid days off on every national and state holiday. However what we're doing here is helping out those on the lower end of the pay scale, those that make $49,000 or less, who could really use that time and a half being paid overtime."
Metro on 08/24/2016