Snead, board discuss proposed change to employee handbook

     County Engineer Derek Snead sought to bring a change to the Jones County Employee Handbook to the Jones County Supervisors' attention during the April 29 board meeting.

   Snead particularly pointed to section 4.11 "Jury and Witness Duty."

   "Right now the process is a county employee gets selected, goes in for jury duty, they get $30 per day, and then at the end of that time, the Clerk of Court writes them a check," he said. "They have the option to turn in their mileage; some do, some don't.

   "On top of that mileage reimbursement," continued Snead, "they also get $30 per day. That's intended for paying for meals and volunteering their civic duty. It's encouragement for a very important duty. How the process works, however, is that $30 is turned back into the county. The county then pays them for a regular day of work."

   Snead feels this transaction of collecting the $30 and then paying the county employee for their time is not the cleanest situation. He feels county employees should get to keep that $30.

   "At the end of the day," he said, "that $30 is intended to pay for that inconvenience, whether it's setting up additional childcare, etc."

   Snead sought the board's thoughts on eliminating that portion of section 4.11 in the handbook.

   "The intent of it is not your salary, your wage, to compensate for that day's work," he said. "It typically doesn't even cover minimum wage; not even close."

   Snead said he also talked to County Attorney Kristofer Lyons about his idea.

   "He is very much in favor of not having employees turn that back into the county," noted Snead of that conversation. "It's also a huge inconvenience for our administration staff. It's a lot of back and forth for such a small amount of giving of their time. For us to turn back in $30 or $60, it takes more time for the office manager to run that through than what it's worth."

   Snead said paying county employees for a full day of work if they serve on jury duty is no different than paying a county employee who also serves on his/her local fire department or ambulance service and gets paged out for an emergency call during the day.

   "We understand that those are very important duties," he said. "We want to encourage those types of things."

   Supervisor Jeff Swisher asked if this matter was something the county needed to run by Mike Galloway, the county's HR manager.

   County Auditor Whitney Hein already looked into the matter with Galloway's office.

   "Mike had one of his colleagues answer," she said. "He said that the language assigning any compensation over (to the county) is still very common. The only time they would remove that is if we are removing their entitlement for paid leave for jury duty. So if we aren't going to pay them, and they had to use vacation or something like that, then they should get to keep that $30."

   Snead said some states do require employees to use their vacation or paid time off for such things as jury duty. Iowa is not one of those states.

   "But it is not against the rules that your employer pays for your leave and then you take your $30 for jury duty," he said. "It seems like an odd policy to me, I guess."

   "Do you think it's right what we're doing now?" Swisher proposed to Hein.

   "The county is offering them pay," she said. "They're not having to use paid time off to do that duty."

   "A lot of places don't pay for you to be on jury duty," commented Supervisor Joe Oswald.

   No action was taken by the board on this matter.