JPs shelve call to adjust pay in prosecutor’s office

Members of Pulaski County’s legislative body and the prosecuting attorney sparred Tuesday over the salaries it takes to attract and retain people in the prosecutor’s office.

At issue were the starting salary levels for about 30 different positions, plus actual salaries for about 10 positions, in Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley’s office.

“The fight’s only just begun,” Jegley said after the Quorum Court’s budget committee voted to table his items indefinitely. Anyone who knows him knows that “manifest injustice is an anathema to me, personally and professionally,” he said.

Before the vote, Jegley explained how a countywide pay study left some of his employees behind.

The study, performed last year by the Johanson Group, a Fayetteville firm, found that Pulaski County employees were underpaid against a competitive market.

To rectify this, the Johanson Group crafted new pay ranges for every county job description with a minimum, a maximum and a midpoint, which is basically what the average going rate would be in a competitive market.

All new Pulaski County employees are to be hired at the job description’s Johanson-approved minimum salary levels unless they meet “exceptionally well-qualified criteria.”

If that’s the case, they can be offered up to 85 percent of their job descriptions’ salary midpoint.

In February, sheriff’s office personnel told the Quorum Court that the new starting salaries for certain positions — including dispatcher, deputy and sergeant — were lower under the Johanson study parameters than they had been previously.

In response, the Quorum Court voted to appropriate $319,433 so the hiring ranges for those positions wouldn’t be lowered.

On Tuesday, Jegley told the budget committee that his situation “is no different that the sheriff’s office” and that “it’s no less critical than the sheriff’s office.”

Jegley presented two different issues he wanted the Quorum Court to remedy.

Five different job descriptions in his office, totaling 29 positions, had starting salaries that decreased through the Johanson study, some by thousands of dollars, Jegley told justices of the peace.

The positions are case clerk, records management supervisor, administrative assistant, victim-assistance coordinator and victim-assistance volunteer coordinator.

And some other jobs — case coordinator and executive secretary — were not properly compensated going into the Johanson study process, Jegley said.

At the beginning of 2017, the human-resources department determined that those positions were already underpaid, he said. But that issue wasn’t hashed out before the Johanson study took effect.

To get those positions into the applicable salary range, it would take an appropriation of about $30,000, Jegley said.

And Jegley also wanted to raise the hiring salaries for those five other job descriptions above 85 percent of the market rate to get them to their pre-2018 hiring level. That change would require no immediate appropriation.

Some Quorum Court members, including Phil Stowers, Lillie McMullen and Donna Massey, worried that making changes for Jegley’s office would elicit a longer list of adjustments.

“My concern is the Pandora’s box,” Stowers said. “We probably cracked that door with the sheriff’s office,” he added.

Massey said she is sympathetic to the issue and that she knows Jegley’s employees work hard, but so do other county offices. Granting his request would lead to others, she said.

“I’m the only department standing here,” Jegley said.

“You’re the only department standing here now,” Massey responded.

Massey also said she did not want to deviate from the Johanson study. The whole point was to make county salaries competitive, she said, even if that means making tough decisions.

“I think we need to stand by it and not weasel up here,” she said.

Stowers agreed, saying: “I get very concerned when we start varying from their plan. Otherwise, why have a study?”

In making his argument, Jegley highlighted the example of the case clerk.

In 2015, Jegley approached the Quorum Court to help curb “horrific attrition” of case clerks. The starting salary at the time was $28,000, and 14 case clerks had left in a calendar year, Jegley said.

By 2017, the starting salary for case clerk has risen to $32,757 through action by the Quorum Court. With Johanson study changes, it was decreased to $28,442, a difference of $4,315, according to a memo sent out by Jegley last month.

A better hiring salary is necessary because criminal-justice work “needs steady hands,” Jegley said. “It needs people who know the ropes, because we’re dealing with life, liberty and property.

Justice of the Peace Julie Blackwood seemed to agree, saying that if Jegley “doesn’t have the resources, if he doesn’t have the manpower to keep [criminals] in jail, then we’ve got a problem.”

Still, Massey, and other members of the committee, remained unswayed.

“However you want to word it,” she told Jegley of the salary increases, “it’s not something I think we should do at this time.”

The committee voted unanimously to table the items indefinitely.

Justin Blagg, director of Quorum Court services, said the full Quorum Court can retrieve a failed committee item, but it takes a two-thirds vote.

So it’s “doable, but it’s a tough row to hoe,” he said.

Stowers told Jegley to let the Quorum Court know if employee turnover ever devolves into a crisis.

“Oh, I will,” he said.