The Cuyahoga county executive appears to have a battle on his hands over how much he can compensate salaried employees. A committee of county council looked over a proposed change in the human resources handbook today. They were not impressed.
Both the internal county auditor and the county prosecutor have declared that county officials had no right to pay salaried employees for overtime work they performed. From 2014 to 2016 that added up to $1.7 million. The head of human resources, Douglas Dykes, proposed to council that such payments be codified in a new personnel policy handbook to make it easier to attract employees.
But Councilman Michael Gallagher argued that extra perks for management like flexible hours, telecommuting, overtime pay would only harm morale for hourly employees. He added that employees already enjoy other benefits the private sector cannot, like the state retirement system.
“Which is why we get people willing to take less money to come here and work 30 years of their lives to be compensated at the backend,” said Gallagher.
Council President Dan Brady was upset that the proposed changes offered by the Armond Budish administration reflected none of the concerns that council had expressed in the last few months.
“It’s on our plate now. And we will dispose of this,” said Brady. “We will use OUR best judgement about what this is going to look like. And we will pass legislation and that will be the policy of the county.”
Council meets again to offer its own plans next Tuesday.