Group of deputies plead for more money

By Jane DeGeorge
Eagle Reporter
Published: April 10, 2008

Twenty Madison County Sheriff’s Office employees filled the county auditorium Tuesday requesting the supervisors higher their salaries.

Sheriff Erik Weaver told officials mid-year salary increases would help him retain his current staff and would be covered by money leftover in his budget due to recent vacancies.
In the past six months, five former sheriff’s office employees have left to work in law enforcement positions in surrounding counties, which offer higher salaries, Weaver said.

Supervisors Chairman Eddie Dean questioned this assertion, saying that some former MCSO deputies had told county officials they had left for reasons unrelated to their compensation. Weaver said that Dean’s statement was an opinion and requested officials provide him with a copy of the written correspondence between county officials and the former deputies.

One of the five other MCSO employees who spoke at the meeting in support of the raises, Deputy James Art, said that the salary increase would help him because as a single parent with a three-year-old son it can be “tough to make ends meet.”

Last month, the sheriff initially requested to increase the salaries of his 19 full-time employees, including one position that is currently vacant, by about seven and a half percent. This increase is more than two and a half times the average rate of inflation for 2007. This past fall, some MCSO deputies received raises using money from previous vacancies, according to the county administrator.

Although Weaver says that money is available within the current MCSO budget to cover these increases – which total about $70,000 for the current budget year – county officials say this is unclear.

County Finance Director Teresa Miller told the supervisors that it appears that the amount of money set aside in the sheriff’s office’s current budget reserved to pay for personnel would not cover the increases. She said that the sheriff may have accounted for savings in other areas of the budget but that county officials have not been given documentation of that.

If the increases are approved, the sheriff told the board he would be willing to retract his previously requested salary increases for the 2008-2009 budget. Additional money may still be added onto the county’s 2008-2009 fiscal year budget if the proposed increases are approved to pay for additional benefits and workers compensation, the county administrator said at the April 8 meeting.

Weaver told the supervisors that during the past four and half years, the sheriff’s office has brought in more than $1 million dollars in highway safety and court fines and unused budgeted money. The sheriff said he recently hired two part-time deputies who will monitor highway safety and will likely bring additional money to the county due to traffic violation tickets.

The supervisors, who did not take action on this matter at their April 8 meeting, discussed requesting additional information from the sheriff including detailed comparisons of law enforcement salaries offered in nearby counties.