Jefferson County offices find furlough alternatives

Four Jefferson County offices plan to implement alternative financial plans without forcing employee furloughs.

Three — the offices of Sheriff Lafayette Woods Jr., Circuit Clerk Lafayette Woods Sr. and Circuit Judge Earnest Brown — submitted alternative plans to participate in the state’s Shared Work Unemployment Compensation Program, which allows employers to cut workers’ hours by at least 10% and have the difference in their pay made up by unemployment compensation.

A fourth office, that of Tax Collector Tony Washington, submitted a request to pay two of his employees out of an alternative fund, called the Collector’s Automated Fund, which would effectively take those employees out of his payroll budget through Aug. 31.

County Judge Gerald Robinson approved the plans Monday.

Monday was the deadline for the officials to submit alternative plans for cutting their personnel budgets to avoid mandatory furloughs of 30% of their employees.

The Quorum Court on Tuesday debated an ordinance that mandates a 30% staffing decrease via employee furloughs through Aug. 31. The ordinance was approved after an intense debate, but with an amendment allowing elected officials to submit alternative plans to the furlough, which would have to be approved by the county judge.

At that meeting, Brown told the justices that he had already received approval from the Arkansas Division of Workforce Services to cut his employees’ hours by 25%, which he said would save more money than a furlough because most of his employees’ salaries are partially reimbursed by the state.

If he were forced to furlough four employees, he said, the county would lose as much as $60,000 in salary reimbursements.

“I’m not saying we don’t need to cut,” Brown told the justices last week. “I’m just saying there’s another way to do it.”

On Monday, Brown told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that had he been forced to furlough four employees, it would have idled three of his 13 juvenile officers and one support staffer, but by being allowed to participate in the Shared Work Program, his office will save $68,000 in salary expenditures, and will receive an additional $30,000 it would have lost in state reimbursement because two of the officers he would have had to furlough would have missed the state certification course in July. That reimbursement, he said, is dependent upon the officers being certified by the state.

“Because they would not have received their certification, the county would not have been eligible to receive that reimbursement,” he said. “Had they been furloughed, they would not have been able to attend the class.”

On Tuesday, Sheriff Woods said he received a text from the county judge telling him that his plan, which would cut the hours of his 42 civilian employees by 20% and modify an upcoming vehicle purchase, had been accepted.

Under the terms of the agreement, Woods said he will cut back the hours of his civilian staff to 32 hours a week through Aug. 31, which he said will enable those employees to collect partial unemployment compensation as well as a $600 weekly federal stipend authorized by the CARES Act, which will be paid through July 31.

Doing so, he said, will save the county nearly a half-million dollars in salary expenses from the sheriff’s office and the jail, and he said it will make it easier for him to manage the duties his office is charged with carrying out.

In addition, Woods said, he proposed making changes to a planned purchase of emergency vehicles this year that had been budgeted at $150,000. Woods said he modified the plan from an outright purchase to instead solicit bids from financial institutions for a five-year loan, which he said would save an additional $140,000 from this year’s budget.

The employees affected by the work reduction, Woods said, include all of his nonuniformed civilian staff. Not affected, he said, are his 102 uniformed staff.

“Those affected are our administrative clerical staff, our office support staff, our nurses, our kitchen staff, all of whom are our nonuniformed staff,” Woods said. “We’ll be looking really hard at how to schedule those employees to minimize the impact on our offices. We’ll be looking at how to stagger those hours and cross-assign some of those duties until this is over with. It’s going to be hard, but this is better than having to furlough jailers and other uniformed personnel, which is what we were initially faced with.”

Washington said the tax office collects an average of $45 million to $50 million annually, out of which it receives a 2% fee of all school taxes collected and a 3% fee of other taxes. Of those fees, he said, 10% goes into the Collector’s Automated Fund, which was set up to fund purchases of technology.

“Our office is fully funded by that fee that we collect, and all of that money goes back into County General at the end of the year,” Washington said. “That portion sent to our automated fund is used to purchase new computers or whatever technology needs we may have.”

Washington said his predecessor, Stephanie Stanton, had replaced the office computers in 2018, a year before he took office, and so the money in the fund had been building up. He said the fund, which receives about $100,000 a year, currently contains $278,000.

“I’ve still got enough in the fund to purchase computers and to pay a couple of salaries as well,” he said. “I can’t afford to lose two people out of my office when they open the courthouse back up on May 18 [Monday].”

Prosecuting Attorney Kyle Hunter said three of the nine people on his support staff will be furloughed until Aug. 31. Because the attorneys in his office are state employees, and others are paid out of grant funds, he said the 30% reduction applied only to his support staff.

“Those are the people who do our paperwork like respond to discovery, prepare sentencing orders, information, answer the phones, prepare mental and alcohol commitments,” Hunter said. “All those things that we do, they help our lawyers do. We’re going to miss them, but the courts have been slow and it’s going to take awhile for them to get back up to full speed, so if we’re going to miss them, this is probably as good a time for it to happen as any, but they’re all important to our office.”

Robinson said the county employs about 425 people, with about 120 affected by furloughs or a reduction in hours.