County officials debate overtime pay

WASHINGTON — A work session on overtime-exempt county employee compensation drew 16 department leaders to the Board of Supervisors’ office Monday morning for a discussion sparked by Ambulance Director Jeremy Peck requesting compensation for 180 hours of unpaid overtime in three months.

“I think this truly is over and above,” Supervisor Jack Seward Jr. said. “I’ve heard from other department heads that, ‘Yeah, that’s your job, when you need to work a little overtime, you work a little overtime,’ … but when I look at this, I think this is over and above what’s called for.”

Peck stressed that he was trying to make a reasonable request.

“I’m not asking for those hours where I’m normally in the office, which is a lot more than 40,” he said. “I’m just asking for the nights and weekend stuff, out of the norm. We all probably work 10-hour days … and those are not what I’m asking for back.”

Supervisors went back and forth on whether their eventual decision would be intended for Peck’s case specifically, or a sweeping change affecting all overtime-exempt county staff.

“My thing is what we do for one, we do for all,” Board Chair Richard Young said. “If we’re going to give one exempt employee extra, then how do we tell another department they’re not getting it?”

Seward said department heads should bring their requests for extra pay to the board for a case-by-case review.

“It’s not our fault, the Board of Supervisors, that each department has handled that differently, that’s up to the different department heads,” he said “If you don’t come to us and let us know that there might be a problem … I don’t know that we’re going to know ahead of time to do it.”

Seward said flexibility could be key, noting that many departments already used informal compensation for overworked employees through flexible schedules.

“If they way it’s being done is acceptable, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose … as long as it’s acceptable, nobody is going to say anything,” he said. “When it becomes unacceptable, that’s when you move.”

Supervisor Marcus Fedler agreed, saying that kind of flexibility was critical for county officials to do their jobs.

“If we establish a policy and we put it in the books, we’re going to have to track it, and if we’re going to be official about it, we’re going to have to kind of make it permanent, and then we’re going to try to squeeze a round peg in a square hole,” he said. “That eliminates the quote-unquote flexibility that we’ve already talked about … I think it hamstrings our department heads if we put an official policy in.”

Peck seemed on board with the case-by-case norm as well.

“I don’t think we’re talking a large number of people here,” he said. “There are definitely do some people that do come in, and I definitely do feel like they should bring something to you guys on their time, like I did.”

Department leaders said the board’s openness to compensating exempt employees like Peck was a drastic reversal of their prior expectations.

“Jeremy brought it up, and thank you Jeremy for doing that, but I don’t know that anybody else knew that they could do that,” Public Health Fiscal Administrator Peggy Wood said. “If you’re an exempt employee (being) able to come to a board and say, ‘I’ve done this over and above, and I would like to now be compensated for it,’ … I don’t think that any of us knew that was an option.”

County Attorney John Gish agreed.

“Some of the words that have been used by the board in the past, since I’ve been county attorney, is, ‘You are public servants, you should expect a pay rate that is less than your peers,’” he said. “I think in some degree those types of comments on the position of the board has been an inhibitor on departments bringing pay raises forward or bringing complaints about overtime or increased pay rate before you gentlemen.”

County Engineer Jacob Thorius said he had explicitly told employees such overtime requests were impossible, even in the case of one recently retired employee who worked 800 hours of overtime in 10 years, the bulk of it concentrated seasonally.

“I tell my guys when they go to exempt status, ‘You will get paid a little extra, but you will work more hours,’” he said. “You can keep track of that time and I’ll try to let you flex some here and there, but you will never come ahead, you will lose.”

Supervisors were hesitant to consider any retroactive compensation for extra hours brought to light at the work session.

"I don’t know about going back on stuff,“ Seward said. ”In this particular case, we were made aware of this problem in August. We’re keeping track of stuff as it’s going on.“

Still, Wood said approving extra compensation for Peck would set a precedent.

“I think now going forward, the education of that is very very important,” she said. “I do think it can be equitable across all departments if you establish a threshold of hours or whatever.”

Some officials suggested setting different policies for each department.

“We need to look at our positions for the position itself, not for all county employees, and I think that’s where … the straight across the board raises that we’ve done maybe caused some of that,” Sheriff Jared Schneider said. “We all have different jobs and different responsibilities and we need to evaluate that and work on that, this is just bringing it to light.”

County Conservation Director Zach Rozmus agreed, saying different county roles carried different levels of urgency, despite their equal importance.

“We rely on all of us to make this whole thing go around, but our jobs aren’t the same when it comes down to it,” he said. “Jeremy not getting on that truck and saying, ‘I’m just going to wait for a part-timer to come in,’ that could be someone’s loved one … I know that’s sort of a doomsday way of looking at it, but sometimes it’s the way you have to with these sorts of things.”

While the meeting provided ample options for the county government, uncertainty remains on how they’ll move forward, both for Peck and for county employees overall.

Regarding their call on Peck’s possible compensation, Board members said they were waiting on the written legal advice of Bill Sueppel — an attorney the board regularly consults in labor negotiations — before moving forward, a discussion which may be reserved for a closed session.

“I’m not sure that we shouldn’t go into a closed session and discuss my wages, because this is an issue about myself, not about the department heads,” Peck said. “I don’t feel like what I’m doing needs to have everybody’s say in it.”

John Gish said a closed session wasn’t necessarily the right move.

“In similar circumstances I don’t think the board has done that,” he said. “Discussing compensation alone is not a trigger to go to closed session … one of the bigger ones that’s harder to overcome is whether the public conversation would effect the public reputation of that employee.”

Regardless of their final decision, the board has numerous other salary issues to address as budget season arrives, many of them tied to the overtime issue including a contentious annual cost-of-living raise.

“I’m not going to sit there tomorrow and say, ‘We’re going to give a 5% salary increase for cost of living,’ … I don’t think we’re going to be ready to make that decision yet,” Young said. “There’s a lot of things in the works right now as far as salaries go that we’re going to have to do in the next couple weeks.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com