County Commission votes to allow COVID-19 pay, make changes going forward, at special meeting
BY TERRY SCHMIDA
KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER
County employees who earned double-time and a half during two pay periods in which the COVID-19 pandemic gathered steam, can breathe a little easier today.
Earlier, at a special Zoomed County Commission meeting, on April 30, commissioners voted to leave in place a pay scheme that Commissioner Craig Cates called unacceptable in its largess to county employees and “unfair” to Monroe County taxpayers.
Meeting in cyberspace for the first time, the Commission and staffers occasionally battled technology problems during the two-hour meeting.
Cates’s sponsored measure was “a resolution rescinding the authorization for emergency response work pay for employees due to the COVID19 crisis from pay periods of March 15, 2020 through April 11, 2020.”
And despite expressing support for the spirit of the bill, Cates’s colleagues all voted against its substance, consoling the neophyte commissioner with the promise of reform for emergency pay down the road.
In fact, the outlines of such a plan are likely to be presented to the Commission by County Manager Roman Gastesi at the next regular meeting, May 20.
Originally, Cates said he sought to protect taxpayers from an emergency plan designed for a county used to hurricanes, not pandemics. Stories of salaried employees doing the same job for a lot more money at a time residents are struggling convinced him that something had to be done.
But the devil is in the details, and after hearing from County Attorney Bob Shillinger that clawing back money would be neither feasible nor profitable, most commissioners vowed to move on, but get it right in the future.
“No,” Shillinger replied flatly when asked if he thought the type of action suggested by Cates’s plan was worth pursuing.
The money, nearly $1.5 million, was never actually distributed, Public Information Officer Kristen Livengood said. It was being held by Clerk of the Court Kevin Madok until the issue was sorted out.
Andrea Thompson, the president of the International Association of Firefighters, IAFF LOCAL 3909, a Captain with Monroe County Fire Rescue, and the Medical Unit leader for the EOC, said that workers had only received the extra pay for time spent working on COVID-19-related issues, and not their entire 40-hour week.
Commissioners David Rice, Sylvia Murphy, and Michelle Coldiron all seemed to agree that while the county’s emergency pay plan needed to be reworked, a deal is a deal, and employees should get to keep their money.
And Murphy requested that pay for fire/rescue personnel be dealt with separately from the others, due to the nature of the job they do, and hours they end up working.
“I don’t like making a promise and giving my word . . . and then rescinding it,” Murphy also said. “[The employees] worked with that [amount] in mind. They planned with that in mind. That ends it right there.”
And Mayor Carruthers stated her belief that she didn’t “think anyone’s happy about what just happened,” following the vote.
On a brighter note, the Commissioners were pleased to receive a check for $1 million from Tax Collector Danise Henriquez, earlier than it was expected.
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