Travis County Commissioners Court
January 24, 2006
Item 20
20 is consider and take appropriate action on budget amendments, transfers and discussion items.
>> good morning, Commissioners and judge. I知 bob van, constable presyringe 2 and I知 joined here by my chief deputy, carol besing. I appreciate that you have allowed me the opportunity to explain this one item. First I need to explain to the court, had this been a simple green circled employee item coming up in the middle of the year, I fully understand the rules about using the pvp and existing money. That's not what the question is. The short version of the background that I need to give you is in fiscal year '05 the court commissioned a peace officer -- a Travis County peace officer pay study and came up with recommendations. And precinct 2 deputy constables were supposed to have been included in that pay study and any recommendations that came out of it. And it was apparently everybody's understanding that they were. In November, hrmd came to the court and advised the court that all the pay issues involving Travis County peace officers had been resolved by the court from the study you commissioned and the recommendations that pbo was able to make to the court to budget for those peace officer pay issues. At that point I went to my chief because I had looked at the current pay schedule that I was told was the one that was in effect for my deputies, and looked at the one that the court had approved on pops for the deputy constables that were on pops. And the first thing that struck me was the entry level on my deputy constables, which I had several, were approximately $3,000 less than what Travis County had approved to pay the other deputy constables. I called hrmd and I said, what happened? There's something wrong here because this thing was supposed to be a fair and equitable, across the county pay. And I was told that precinct 2 constables were accidentally left off that study. Had they been on this study and presented to the court , at budget time pbo would have been able to recommend or include for the court's approval hopefully the funding of the four positions that I know have that were underfunded, and because they're unclassified, they're call green circles. And as it is, when it came to the court, the approval of matching those salaries, my deputies' salaries to what the rest of the deputy constables in Travis County gets paid, I have four employees that are now green circled and being underpaid. And it had come back to me that I need to use over one-third of my performance based pay that was for performance issues to make up for the fact that hrmd left my peace officers out of the study that they presented to the court last fiscal year and which pbo was unable to tell you, to advise you to fund the entry level for those four positions. And my request to the court is that puts an awful burden on me to shortchange the high performing employees in my office to make up for something that would have been considered during last budget year had I not -- had my deputies not been left out of the study for whatever reasons they were left out.
>> let me make sure I understand one little point. You did use the three percent, which was the across the board --
>> which is why we're not asking for as much money as we would have, but it still didn't bring them up --
>> it's okay. I知 just trying to get clarity. The three percent was specifically attached for across the board has already been applied. We're just talking about the little differential between that. And the question is whether you have to use performance-based pay for four office to try to fix the remainder of that. I知 trying to make sure where we're at.
>> and that three percent brought them closer to where that entry level was, but it didn't get them over entry level.
>> and if you had known -- I知 trying to lay out the course here. If you had known that there was this four thousand dollar issue, that that would have been something that you would have asked us to put on our budget request form so that we could have an open discussion of this during budget and get it resolved there as we have resolved other kinds of issues for other departments that were, all call them tweaking, tweaking budgets.
>> that's what I would have told the court. We were under the understanding that we were told that we were included in the peace officer pay scale and the recommendations, and pbo would have been -- had us right in line for funding those four underfunded positions. It didn't come to my attention until the presentation was made in November, and I go, then why are my four deputies getting -- this is something that I thought should have gone into effect October 1st, and it turns out that they've been underpaid.
>> let me clarify --
>> can you maybe -- okay. Go ahead.
>> pbo's on funding recommendations, we have treated the constables' deputies since they've been in the classified pay plan the same as all other classified employees. And we treat the peace officers that are in the pop scale according to what the court approves for the pops scale. So I tend to agree that the constable would have had an issue during the markup with the fact had he realized that his deputies were not funded inside the peace officer pay scale. But from pbo's position, we take and give the court and we incorporate the constable's classified staff members, the deputies, into the calculations for the salary increases as approved by the Commissioners court. And we do the calculation on the pops scale, those inside the pops scales, on those employees that are inside the pops scales.
>> with that said, though, we do do some tweaking related to our classified folks. I知 thinking of the career ladders where we say here's the stuff, but here is a specific enhancement that is out there for certain departments to deal with their issues as well that is separate and apart from all the regular, across the board things. It's an enhancement. And I don't want to have constable van get caught up in something that is not for precision of language, I feel certain bob would have brought en-- constable van would have brought this up during budget.
>> but the argument for the increase during budget had it been brought up would have been what?
>> that hr came to you in December and said, look, we left them off, we forgot to match them to the other deputy constables whose pay went into effect October 1st, and this is what we -- we recommend to the court and the court passed that unanimously, but with no funding. And then when I asked about that, they said, well, it wasn't passed with funding, which I知 aware of it wasn't passed with funding, but had it passed and been part of the recommendation during the peace officer study and during the budget year -- yes, Commissioner?
>> but my point is how could that be left out? Somewhere along the line I don't understand how the process that things get left out? I知 trying my best to figure out how it happened so we can prevent something like this from happening in the future in my mind. But when you have to go back and fix stuff, and that's apparently what we're looking at, going back and fixing stuff that some way we left it off the table. My point is how -- what must we do to ensure that that doesn't happen again. So somewhere along the line I知 missing the mark and I知 missing the overall viewpoint of what I hear you guys saying down there to fix the problem and how we can prevent this from happening again. There's something procedurally not in place in my mind.
>> I値l defer to you, Commissioner, and your decisions, but when I realized that this problem had occurred, I made no attempt to cast blame. I said this was an accident. It was an oversight and it just happened.
>> I知 not looking to point the finger at nobody. I知 not near that. But what I am here for is to be in a preventive mode where things don't happen again in my mind what I知 looking at today, I知 still not getting everything. I知 still not getting the full flavor.
>> Commissioner, I would hazard a guess that because my peace officers in my office are not on pops and we've been off of pops and on performance based pay for three years, that it just got overlooked when the study was -- the study included them, the recommendations, they were left off of recommendations. We have human resources sitting at the table. How and why?
>> I want to clarify that constable's positions were indeed covered and included in the peace officers' pay study. What had happened as we all know is that this particular office had gone on to the classified pay scale. One of the things that -- I wasn't aware that this item was on and I haven't seen the backup for it, but I am aware that there was a request to fund the green circled employees that were affected by the results of the study. Hr's role was to classify them and we classified them to the appropriate levels on the scale. Your direction from us as well as the other departments had been that any department with the short file to deal with green circled employees would use their performance-based pay allocation that was made as a part of the budgeting process. That was our response to constable van. And really no different from pbo's position.
>> if anybody is looking at that, what is the definition of green circled employee? We've heard it mentioned several times, but I think folks are unaware of what that means as far as Travis County is concerned. What is it?
>> green circled employees are slots of those that are being paid below what has been approved or what has been proven as the market value of that position, below minimum of the market value of the position.
>> but are we all in agreement that these four are underpaid and there's a source of funding?
>> that's the reason that I知 here before the court. Had it been any other issue I wouldn't be before you. I understand green circled.
>> and so how much salary savings did we budget for this department?
>> none.
>> some of the small departments have very little salary savings because they have very little turnover.
>> so if we want to fund this from allocated reserve, that solves it if we're going to pay it. It's either allocated reserve or no?
>> that's correct. That would be the funding source. The constable has requested $4,191 from allocated reserve.
>> for all four?
>> to bring all four positions up to what the county says is their minimum entry levels.
>> not that much apiece, but that much total.
>> that's total.
>> Commissioner Sonleitner?
>> judge, I知 going to move approval of this particular item. And I知 not creating any kind of a precedent here, but it just says that we need to pay very close attention to the specialized issues that come with a non-pops pops group so that we do not create inequity between the five constables' offices and the park rangers. So I would move approval that this is a very specific case and don't read anything more than that into it. From allocated reserves.
>> I値l second that, but I do agree that -- Commissioner, simply what's happened here is you've got two scales and so I remember when constable van came and said, hey, we want to go off the pops scale. I wonder -- at the time I said okay, I hope everything gets determined and gets straight once we start doing all these salary adjustments and this and that. Basically what has happened to us is this, in this study it shows that there is an inequity there. We need to fix it. It probably shouldn't come out of performance-based pay, but that was the hand down, if you will, of what the court did because we thought that that's really how we were supposed to deal with this thing. I think this is a little bit of an odd deal, but we do need to bear in mind when we are asked to deviate from the norm and what we're doing -- and especially once you start talking about pops stuff. I mean, that in itself gets you in a little bit of a troubled issue. But I don't mind seconding that.
>> and constable van, when he originally did this, he literally did scoop up every available dollar that he had floating around in his budget to make going off pops happen. And if this were a much larger department, he wouldn't be solving his own problem here and not be looking to the court, but when you are a smaller department, you don't have as much flexibility. And I don't think he would be here if this were not a problem he did not feel that he could solve internally in such a small department.
>> my comments on it, not that I do not support this, constable van, it's just the procedural process we need to have. I think we've heard from hr and we've heard from leroy, but as we get to where we are today, this coming back before the Commissioners court today is because of the fact that there has been some things that have not been clarified, per se, to ensure that what we're doing today may have been taken care of one way or the other and brought to the point where we could have dealt with it. So I知 not pointing the finger at anybody, I知 just trying to suggest that we need to be I think more vigilant as far as my concern is, especially when it comes to these compensation issues for the Travis County employees. And it's just -- it's very straightforward to me as far as what we need to do to make sure that it doesn't happen again. Thank you.
>> all in favor of the motion? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> now, can I clarify --
>> approval of the rest of the items, which would be ft 1 and ft 8. Let me get a second and we'll get your clarification.
>> second.
>> I just wanted to mention that I do have the 10 account numbers that that 4191 go into that I値l distribute to the clerk for the record on that transfer.
>> we approve that too.
>> okay.
>> thank you very much.
>> and court, I値l apologize for taking up maybe another 15 seconds. I want to thank you for allowing me to come up here today. I want to tell you that since our office has gone off of pops and gone on performance based pay, it's my determination -- I would love you tell you right now I think the experience, training, the performance level of my office has almost tripled in the three years that I have been off of pops. And we're doing the county's work the way y'all want us to.
>> all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote also.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, January 25, 2006 9:19 AM