County takes hard line on comp time

Committee seeks to rein in banking of comp time by county employees

Taylor County is cracking down on county workers banking compensatory time.

The county uses compensatory or “comp” time in place of paying out overtime with the employees allowed to exchange time worked beyond their normal day for paid time off at a later date.

Existing county policies set a 90-day window for workers to use their comp time with the limit of only being able to use 8 hours per two-week pay period. Exempt (salaried) employees have a further limit of only being able to accrue up to 20 hours of comp time and lose additional hours. There was no cap on the amount of hours of comp time nonexempt (hourly) workers could accrue but officially had 90 days to use them.

Human services director Suzanne Stanfley told members of the county’s finance and personnel committee on Tuesday that she has employees in her department who have over 100 hours of compensatory time banked and the challenge is how to find the time for them to use it.

“I think comp time is valuable to employees but it should be limited,” Stanfl ey said. Committee member Lester Lewis cited the policy that says that the employees may only accrue 20 hours and everything over 20 is removed.

“You are saying take away their time?” Stanfley asked.

“Yes,” Lewis replied. County human resources director Nicole Hager reported that as of April 9, non-union county hourly employees had 956.9 hours of comp time banked with salaried employees having 242 hours.

Lewis called on the county to follow its policy and that only the comp time accrued in the past 90 days should be allowed. Stanfley said this wasn’t fair to the employees who were allowed to accrue those hours with the approval of their supervisor who has since retired from the county.

One suggestion was that any granting of comp time would have to be approved by the department head and their oversight committee before being allowed to take place. Committee chairman Chuck Zenner noted that this could prove unworkable if something unforeseen came up and they wouldn’t have time to get ahold of the committee.

Other suggestions were to have department heads present plans to their oversight committees about how the comp time backlog would be handled at the department level. However, others balked at the idea of giving the committees that authority in place of a countywide rule.

“When are we going to start making employees follow policy?” Lewis asked.

He noted all the employees have signed off that they read the policies and should be held to them.

“When your boss lets you accrue those, I don’t know that is the fault of the employee,” said committee member Scott Mildbrand.

County forest administrator Jake Walcisak cautioned committee members against taking away people’s accrued comp time noting that it would be removing or reducing their total wages and benefits. Given the current labor markets this could serve to detract people from accepting a position at the county, applying with the county or staying with the county.

County register of deeds Jayme Kohn also questioned how they would take the hours away and if the county would pay them out for the hours if people could not use them because of being short staffed.

In many cases, the hours are accrued due to work needing to get done when departments have been short-staffed due to vacancies, people having time off or cutbacks in positions. She suggested giving a time period for people to use the hours that have been accrued.

In the end, after several amendments, committee members approved a change in policy to cap the amount of accrued comp time for all non-union employees at 20 hours with hours beyond that lost if not taken and that going forward they will have to be used within 90 days. The existing banked hours must be used by November 1 or be lost. The rule on being able to use only 8 hours within any twoweek time period remains in place.

Comp time was not the only area where committee members sought to crack down on what they viewed as potentially being abused by county staff. Committee members also created new rules for how and for how long county employees could attend county meetings. Zenner noted that at the last county board session, there had been a number of county employees who had attended for the entire meeting. Specifically mentioned was the Veterans Service Office which was closed for most of the day because of it and the forestry department with Walcisak in attendance at the county board session.

Lewis defended having employees attend meetings when there are issues before the board that they can talk about. However, he said in the case of a long agenda, he said there should be specific times set for them to appear to address that topic. He suggested the county could set a time and then at close to that time finish up what they were discussing on another topic and move to that particular agenda item. He also said that staff on work time, should have the permission of their oversight committee chairperson or make a request to the committee chairman to attend a meeting. This would only impact those attending meetings while at work. County employees may attend any meeting on their own time.

Committee member Rollie Thums noted that time off or using comp time must also be approved by their department heads. He also said that the offices should always be covered and not closed because of staff attending a meeting.

Veterans Service office benefits specialist Nikki Sherman said she had been asked to be at the recent county board meeting by her department head Shellie Shaw noting there were multiple items on the agenda that impacted their office. Shaw had been out of town at training and Sherman said she had been scheduled to go to that training as well but stayed back in order to keep the office open.

Walcisak said he felt it was important for the county board members to get the input of their employees and department heads describing it as the first line of public interaction. He agreed with the idea of having set times but also noted that in the case of last week’s meeting several agenda items had been shifted around making it difficult to gauge when or how long people needed to be there. He said he favored the use of hybrid meetings using Zoom or other video conferencing to allow the employees to remain working at their desk while monitoring the meeting so that they could come when it got close to the topic they needed to address.

Mildbrand strongly opposed the used of the Zoom meetings. “If someone has to participate at the meeting they should be at the meeting,” he said.

In the end, committee members approved a motion to require employees to get the permission of the chairman of their oversight committee, or of the personnel committee, to attend and then have a specific time on an agenda that they should be there for. In addition, the employee would not be able to earn comp time for the day they were coming to a committee or board meeting.

In other business, committee members tabled a request from treasurer Sarah Holtz to give her authority to allow her staff to work 40 hour weeks during busy periods in the months of July, August and November.

The staff in her office are at 35 hours per week and she wanted the option to have them work those additional hours during the busy time periods after a request to fill a vacant part-time position was denied. The additional hours would come out of the treasurer’s department budget.

“I get that you want to do budget cuts, but we still have to do our jobs,” Holtz said.

She said that while they can, and do, pull staff from the real property lister’s office to help at times, that only serves to put the real property lister behind at a time when they are seeing record numbers of land transactions occurring.

“The deeds are not slowing down, people are buying and selling like crazy,” she said.

Mildbrand opposed the idea, noting that in the discussion on going to 40-hour work weeks, the benefits would be reducing the number of workers. “There has to be a corresponding cut to workers,” he said.

Lewis said it needed to be situation specific and in this case the county eliminated a position that worked 35 hours over the two-week pay period and that Holtz was asking for less than the hours paid for that position. “She could do that under her current budget and it doesn’t add to benefits,” he said.

Committee member Ray Soper raised concern about the job descriptions for the treasurer’s office staff and if they needed to be adjusted to allow for the additional hours of work time.

Lewis said they needed to come up with a plan on how to incorporate the flexibility in the job description and allowing the temporary increases in number of hours worked. “I don’t think it should be voted on today,” Lewis said.

Mildbrand disagreed with the idea of allowing the treasurer to have the employees work the extra hours during those limited times. “The plan will create total chaos,” he said. “You can’t run a business that way,” he added, noting there needed to be definite rules.

Committee members voted to table action to give Holtz time to work with Hager to develop a proposal about how it could work. “I want that office to get help, but I want to do it fairly and legally,” Thums said.