The Personnel Committee of the Mississippi County Quorum Court met Tuesday afternoon and is recommending changes to the county's employee handbook. The changes came, primarily, in the area of "comp time" and the way in which "comp time" and overtime are approved and submitted.
The committee voted to recommend that the full quorum court amend the current personnel ordinance through a new resolution.
After extensive discussion, the first change the committee seeks is to limit the number of compensatory leave hours that county employees can accrue to a maximum of 120 hours. That change will be included in Section Four, Subsection VI, letter H. Another change the committee seeks is to include "Supervisors or elected officials are responsible for making sure hours are correct" into existing policy found in Section Four, subsection VI, letter K.
A great deal of discussion was made about whether or not "comp time" could be carried over to the new fiscal year, like vacation time and sick time currently is. However, Kelli Jones, the new Director of Financial Management said that the county's consultant told her that the Arkansas Constitution forbids carrying "debt" over to the new year. While it appeared to be the will of the committee to allow the carrying over of up to 40 hours into the next year, it was not included in the referring motion at this time.
All motions were made by the new Justice of the Peace, Howard Norvell of Wilson.
Members of the committee also directed that a new form titled, "Mississippi County Compensatory Time Authorization" be used henceforth by county employees. The form has been used in the past, but a slight modification has been made that clearly delineates between comp hours worked and comp hours accumulated. It also requires both the employee's signature and their supervisor's signature as well.
It was announced by multiple people during the meeting that the form was altered after an employee came into the Financial Management Office and asked that his comp time be changed over from being accumulated to being paid.
With the new form and the new maximum accumulation, no one can come in and ask for paid comp time, when they earlier asked for it to be accumulated. Also, the limit on how many hours can be accumulated prevents one big "cash out" from damaging a department's entire budget at one time.
thenry@blythevillecourier.com