Policy change allows transfer of sick leave

A policy change occurred at the commissioners meeting Monday, Dec. 31, due in part to the new County Treasurer, Christina Nelson.

Earlier in December Nelson, who has been the IT director for the county, requested the commissioners to donate some of her remaining sick leave hours to the sick leave bank for general use.

“I didn’t want to see those hours [accrued] moved off the books,” said Nelson, especially when others might have a need for those hours.

Elected positions do not accrue vacation hours or sick leave hours because they are salaried positions with an annual pay rate.

Commissioner Michael Largent moved during the commissioners meeting to change the language of the policy “to allow non-represented county employees who have become newly-elected officials to donate up to 200 hours of accumulated sick leave to the sick bank within 30 days prior to taking office and to offer the same opportunity to unionized employees to the normal policy review process.”

Commissioner Art Swannack said he put in a lot of the research to see the policy change is made correctly.

“I don’t want people getting rid of all their sick leave when they’re still an employee and not yet taken their position just because they won on November whatever, and they all the sudden get sick and they have nothing,” Swannack explained.

Largent complimented Swannack on the work he put into rewriting the policy.

Before the policy change, there was no accommodation for an employee who moved into an elected position to donate their sick leave. Instead the individual would lose their sick leave accrual entirely at midnight of Dec. 31.

The commissioners decided that the change of county employees to elected officials was a rare enough occurrence to make a change in the policy. Nelson mentioned the movement from employee to elected official has been seen more commonly in other counties throughout the state.

Because the change in policy was adopted before the beginning of the new year, Nelson’s request was able to go through.

She made the request within the required 30 days prior to her taking office.

No transfer can occur after an employee starts an elected term in office.