COLA increase for county employees tabled until audit report

WADESBORO — Anson County Board of Commissioners decided at their August 15 meeting to defer implementing additional COLA (cost of living adjustment) raises for county employees until the official numbers from the state’s 2022 completed audit are returned.

Multiple county employees appeared before the Anson County Commissioners at their August 1 meeting to raise their concerns regarding a 12.5% COLA (cost of living adjustment) salary increase granted to the Sheriff’s Office. All other county employees received a 2.5% salary increase, for a 10% difference.

County Manager Leonard Sossamon said the only way they could financially achieve an even COLA raise across the board would be to delay the purchase of mechanized lifts for EMS, totaling about $300,000, as well as freeze certain county positions that they’re actively hiring for until the end of the year.

There are nine vacant positions in DSS, two in the finance department, and a few more openings in IT, GIS, inspections and water conservation. It was stated that open positions in the sheriff’s office, jail or EMS should not be frozen.

“If you free those until the end of the year, that would give you enough going back to the motion made by commissioner Woodburn [at Aug. 1 meeting], to provide another 7.5 percent increase to those who got 2.5 percent,” Sossamon said.

Chairman JD Bricken said that they should think about filling the finance positions as soon as possible and not freezing those vacancies.

“Having them will help us avoid to having this situation again next year,” Bricken said. “I would be concerned about those two positions being froze. Part of why we’re here is because we’ve had many years of finance data that we’re trying to gather and we’re just now starting to get close to where we know what we’re doing.”

Commissioner Lawrence Gatewood said part of his hesitancy for approving the increase is their lack of knowledge regarding what they have in available funds to permit the COLA increase. The results from the counties 2022 audit will not be available until either November or December.

“I personally have been vilified for not supporting this additional COLA increase,” Gatewood said. “I received a phone call from a citizen just last week indicating ‘Why ya’ll being so hard on your people [county employees].…They haven’t received a raise in two and a half years.”

To set the record straight, Gatewood said that the board of commissioners delivered a 2.5% COLA increase in July of 2021, and approved another 3.4% increase that year. In 2022, Gatewood said the board of commissioners approved a 3.5% increase that July and a special 6.2% bonus out of available COVID funds for all county employees.

“I’m glad we did [those COLA increases] because our employees deserve it,” Gatewood said, adding that he made the motion for many of those increases at the time. “My concern is we don’t know how much money we have in the bank.”

He stated that as of June 2021, their unrestricted fund balance was $15.3 million. It dropped to $12.1 million in 2021, and the figures for 2022 and 2023 are not available at this time.

“As opposed to freezing new positions, critical needs that we have in the county, I would suggest that we table the implementation of an additional COLA until we have the completed 2022 audit report in another 2-3 months according to the county manager,” Gatewood restated. That is my motion.”

Commissioner Priscilla Little-Reid provided some additional commentary on why she supports the COLA increase for all county employees, not just the Sheriff’s Office at this time.

“Just be fair to other citizens,” she said to the board. “You knew whenever you made the 12.5 increase, you didn’t know how much was in the fund balance then. You took a risk If you’re going to do it, do it across the board. You can’t do it for one department and not cover the other people. You messing with their morale, their motivation. They don’t want to come to work. They don’t want to do their job …If everybody just walked off the job, who going to run the county?”

Little-Reid’s comments were made despite her affirmative vote for the COLA increase for the Sheriff’s Office a few months prior; Little-Reid has stated that she was not aware of these details at the time of her vote.

“I’m just asking that whenever you get ready to vote you take into consideration other people’s feelings… how they feel when they got to come do a job they didn’t get but 2.5% raise for,” Little-Reid said. “It needs to be straight across the board. Make them (county employees) feel important too.”

Curious email prolongs the discussion

With Gatewood’s motion still hanging, Commissioner Jamie Caudle made the board aware of an email dated June 27, 2021, that gave details of raises to 16 employees, ranging from $18,424 to $1,337. Caudle stated that there was not a lot of outrage concerning these raises two years ago, to which a chorus of ‘We didn’t know’ came from the audience.

Gatewood said he was aware of one special increase that year of $10,000 to the county clerk, which he said he voted against. Gatewood said he wasn’t aware of any other increases, and that the source of this information should be disclosed to all of the commissioners.

Caudle said he asked for a copy of the email from county attorney Scott Forbes, who provided him with it.

“If it came from a prior county manager, I think that is a direct reflection of this board of commissioners because we are ultimately responsible for that individual,” Caudle said. “And I’ll go back to that as part of the transparency we are trying to provide to all citizens. That’s why the COLA raise was in the budget proposal and was voted on by commissioners, and not done behind the scenes behind a county manager. We’re trying to be transparent with everything.”

Caudle agrees that this email needs to be investigated, but stated that there is probably someone with knowledge pertinent to this email that knows how this came about. Gatewood asked that county clerk Denise Cannon go through prior meetings and see if these “adjustments, raises, bonuses, whatever they were” can be accounted for in the minutes of previous board meetings. Cannon stated affirmatively that she would look into the matter.

Motion to defer approved

Chairman Bricken reiterated that any claims that the initial COLA increase for the Sheriff’s Office were done in secret were unfounded. He stated that he asked county clerk Cannon to clearly separate out the proposed amount so it wasn’t diluted into a 200-page budget that could easily be skipped over. Bricken said that he did “Everything possible to make sure that this was upfront.”

Caudle also reiterated that all available documentation and communication was made available to all commissioners prior to their budget vote.

Gatewood repeated his initial motion to table the COLA increase until the audit report is completed. Caudle seconded it.

Commissioner Jarvis Woodburn stated that he wants to do what is best for all county employees, but he would still like to see the numbers so they fully understand the impact of their decision.

Vice Chairman Robert Mims, Bricken, Gatewood and Caudle voted to defer a vote until the audit report is completed. Commissioners Little-Reid and Woodburn opposed; Commissioner Harold Smith was absent for the meeting.

At least 10 county employees were in the audience. Upon the decision, ‘Wrong, wrong, wrong’ and ‘They don’t listen, they don’t care’ could be heard as they exited to the hallway.

In an effort for even further transparency with the public, the Anson Board of Commissioners now meet twice a month on the first and third Tuesday of each month. Their next meeting will on September 5, according to the Anson County website.