CLEARFIELD – The ongoing conflict between officers of Clearfield County Court and the county commissioners over salaries of employees in both the Domestic Relations and Probation offices continues.
Last week, Rick Redden, director of Clearfield County’s Domestic Relations Section, and F. Cortez “Chip” Bell, court administrator, met with local media in a desperate attempt to bring attention to a huge understaffing issue in Redden’s office.
Low salaries compared to other counties, has led to a severe issue where DRS only has eight employees in its 19 positions. He stated applicants laugh or hang up once they discover the wages being offered.
The saddest part of this is that it is not necessary. There are state funds available to provide incentives to increase the compensation of the employees in both departments, but the county commissioners will not even sit down to discuss this with court officials, according to Bell.
In a response to the media regarding this, the commissioners only stated that they are in the middle of contract negotiations and were not happy this issue was brought to the public.
They are concerned that increased wages would lead to the county having to contribute more money to pensions, but Bell said the increase in pension money can also be covered by the state funds so there would be no additional cost to the taxpayers.
The media was provided on Tuesday with two different proposals for solutions to the problem made by President Judge Fredric J. Ammerman: the first from July and the second in December. Neither received a response or a scheduled meeting with the commissioners.
In the first proposal, Ammerman suggests raising the supervision fees for the probation office from $25/month to $50/month to help compensate employees, including an open court reporter position the county has had trouble filling for over five years.
Ammerman guarantees these funds for four years.
The second proposal outlines a scale for bonuses, which can be given from the state funds to employees of the domestic relations and probation departments.
“All benefits and taxes, including but not limited to pension payments associated with payment of supplements, overtime or supplemented on-call pay shall also be paid from the supervision or incentive monies, as applicable.
“The county would be under no responsibility to pay or distribute any of the supplemental payments described herein until the county has actually received the monies from the supervision or the incentive funds.
“The union contracts can describe the methods for the payment of the supplements and overtime, while the court’s administrative order will do the same.”
As Bell and Ammerman explained, the court cannot utilize these monies without the commissioners’ approval.
This second proposal also explains that Ammerman along with Redden and Shawn Burkhart, director of Probation Services, are available to discuss this with the commissioners in more detail. No such meeting has been scheduled.
In their response to the original inquiry on these issues, the commissioners point out: “By law, the county cannot raise the wages of these employees, except through negotiation and execution of a collective bargaining agreement or other bargained instrument,” which is a similar point Bell made that these things need to be done now, before the contract negotiations are complete.
Ammerman, Bell and Redden are all confused by the commissioners’ refusal to even discuss these proposals with them, which led to them contacting the media.
Meanwhile taxpayers of the county are suffering due to lack of services in these departments.
In addition to the information supplied by the court on Tuesday, local media have also received a statement from county employees in response to the statement the commissioners supplied, which to be fair, we are also including here:
“Information received from the Controller’s office states that in 2021 health insurance premiums were: Single – $13,645.44 per employee and Family coverage – $32,662.08, not over $39,000 as Commissioner [Dave] Glass stated. In 2022, these premiums will increase (keeping the current coverage) to Single – $13,925.44 (+$280) and Family – $33,501.72 (+839.64).” This is over $5,000 less than what the commissioners indicated to the public in their media release.
“Also, the county pension plan is made of employee and county contributions. All employees contribute from each paycheck 5 percent or more of their pay to the pension fund, which is invested and earns dividends that go into the fund. How much the county contributes each year is determined by an actuarial method; that is how much money will be paid out in benefits over an employee’s lifetime. It is not just all taxpayer monies, the employees and the investment dividends go into the fund also.
They finished with “If we are going to present information to the public, let’s share real information, not just throw random numbers out.”