Court ends longevity pay for new employees

Collin County commissioners voted Tuesday to eliminate longevity pay for new county employees and to keep longevity pay for employees who currently receive it.

The commissioners discussed the issue for one-and-a-half hours during a four-hour-long meeting in their packed courtroom. Employees from the Collin County District Clerk’s Office, Collin County Clerk Clerk’s Office and Collin County Sheriff’s Office anxiously waited during the meeting to see what the commissioners would do to their longevity pay, which they receive annually.

Commissioner Jerry Hoagland said the county is compensating its employees “very well without longevity pay.”

“We’re leading the market in employee pay. I think we need to eliminate the whole longevity pay program. I don’t think we need longevity pay,” Hoagland said.

Collin County Sheriff Terry Box addressed the court and said with the longevity pay, Collin County is No. 1 in the region for law enforcement employees’ pay. However, the county ranks eighth in pay scales without longevity pay when compared to law enforcement jobs in Denton County, the city of Plano, the city of Allen, and the city of Richardson.

All commissioners and County Judge Self voted to approve the elimination of longevity pay except for Commissioner Joe Jaynes. He voted against the issue because he felt at some point 50 percent of the county employees would have longevity pay and the other 50 percent would not.

All deputy sheriffs and prosecutors will continue to receive longevity pay per a statute which prohibits longevity pay from being taken away from them.

Commissioner Jerry Hatchell said the reason the court created longevity pay in 1988, when he and Hoagland were both on the court, was to give longevity pay to all classifications of employees rather than just the deputy sheriffs and prosecutors.

The county currently plays $3.1 million and $260,000 in benefits costs, which are an average of $2,500 per employee, for longevity pay, said Cynthia Jacobson, the director of the county’s human resources department.

The commissioners also approved the elimination of paying employees who retire from the county additional payments for longevity pay. Jacobson said the county has paid 16 employees a total of $75,000 in the 2006-07 fiscal year in additional payments for longevity pay after they retired.

Commissioner Phyllis Cole said she was absolutely opposed to additional payment to employees upon their retirement. She, along with Hoagland, did know the county was paying people additional amounts of money when they retired for longevity pay and both commissioners asked Jacobson when this began as they didn’t remember approving the additional payments.

The commissioners court has previously voted to eliminate longevity pay for all elected officials.

The commissioners also voted to grandfather the 140 employees who receive service credit for longevity pay. All commissioners and Self voted to grandfather the employees except Cole, who voted against it. She did not agree that people should receive longevity pay if they have worked for the county, left and then were rehired by the county because the employees choose to resign from the county, Cole said. Longevity pay was created to reward people who have continually worked for the county, Cole said.

“If we’re going to call it longevity pay, it needs to be for longevity pay and not paid to people who work here, leave and then come back,” Cole said.

The commissioners court also approved a 10 percent cap above the base salary of an employee for longevity pay for employees who currently receive longevity pay.

In other news, county employee Shonda Powell asked the court in the public comment period why it chose to eliminate health insurance benefits for employees who work for the county and state of Texas, and spouses of county employees who work for the state.

Powell’s husband, Jeff, works in the Community Supervision and Corrections Department and can no longer be included on her health insurance through the county because he is a state of Texas employee, Powell said after the meeting. She said she did not understand why state employees or spouses of county employees who work for the state of Texas are being singled out. The court could not respond to her comments as the topic was not an agenda item for Tuesday’s meeting.

During the Collin County Health Care Foundation meeting held immediately prior to the commissioners court meeting, the foundation’s board of trustees, which is the commissioners court, approved a lease agreement for the Collin County Bio-Terrorism Department to lease space from the Collin County Health Care Trust Foundation office at 825 N. McDonald Street at no charge. The agreement is valid from now until Dec. 31, 2008.

Dan Dodd, chairperson of the Democratic Party of Collin County, and Bill Baumbach, who is a former Democratic Party candidate for county judge, spoke in opposition of the Bio-Terrorism Department taking up space in the Collin County Health Care Foundation for no charge.

Dodd asked the commissioners to remember the county’s history of helping indigent health care patients and asked that the Bio-Terrorism Department pay for the space it would lease from the county in the Collin County Health Trust Foundation.

Baumbach said the Bio-Terrorism Department should pay the $10,000 that it would cost to rent the space from the Health Care Trust Foundation.

The board of trustees also approved the declination of 2007 Grant Awards for healthcare non-profit organizations because the county cannot legally issue grants to the organizations. The county will continue to pay grants for non-profit organizations from now until Dec. 31 of this year and will then issue non-profit organizations new business associates agreements for health care beginning Jan. 1, 2008.

Candy Blair, of the County Health Services Department, said the attorneys who worked with the county expressed concerns about the county issuing grants to non-profit organizations for health care because some parents of children who received care at the non-profit organizations were living in the U.S. illegally. Some parents also did not acquire Social Security numbers for their children, Blair said. The Health Care Foundation’s Advisory Board suggested the county require the non-profit organizations to use the last four numbers of the patients’ Social Security numbers and issuing a diagnosis code for the patient when applying for grants, Blair said.

Hoagland said he was told that the McKinney-based Children and Community Health Care non-profit clinic did not receive a county grant because it was treating people who do not live in the U.S. legally. Several members of the clinic attended the meeting and said that was not true. Mike Mixson, who is the director of technology for the CCHC’s Board of Directors, told the commissioners the center declined a county grant because the center would not release any information about the patients to the county.

Mary Nelle Cummins, president of the CCHC’s board of directors, wrote a letter dated Nov. 5 that was addressed to the commissioners court that said the center would release patient information as long as the information did not tie specific information to the patients, such as listing a diagnosis code and the patients’ ages or ZIP codes.

“We are not willing to change CCHC policy to meet the requirements that have been attached to this grant award, especially since they were added after the announcement of the county grant proposal awards,” Cummins’ letter stated.

In other news, the Collin County Health Care Foundation board of trustees unanimously approved transferring the immunization program that is currently provided by the county’s Women, Infants and Children program to the Health Care Services Department. The transfer will ensure more children receive immunizations, Blair said.

Contact staff writer Brandi Hart at hartb@acnpapers.com. To post comments online, access

this story at www.scntx.com.

Current Rating: 0 of 0 votes!

Rate File: Select Rating: * ** *** ****

 Plano Apartments
 Plano Attorneys
 Plano Auto Dealers
 Plano Auto Parts
 Plano Auto Repair
 Plano Beauty Salons
 Plano Car Rental
 Plano Dentists
 Plano Doctors
 Plano Flowers
 Plano Hotels
 Plano Insurance
 Plano Loans
 Plano Mortgages
 Plano Movers
 Plano Pizza
 Plano Realtors
 Plano Restaurants
 Plano Storage
 Plano Tax Preparation
 Plano Travel
 Featured
 More...