Columbus City Council on Tuesday once again took a run at using federal American Recovery Plan Act funding to give its employees incentive pay.
After much debate the council agreed to spend about $720,000 to give a one-time $3,000 incentive check to hourly full-time employees and a “temporary raise” to department heads.
On March 15, the council voted to give all city employees a total of $3,000, split into two $1,500 payments. Part of that resolution called for the city to get an Attorney General’s opinion signing off on those payments. The payments were to go out at the end of June.
Tuesday, City Attorney Jeff Turnage said he still had not received an AG’s opinion.
“The AG’s office has said they will probably issue a ruling at some point, but they are not going to say whether they approve of the resolution or not,” he said. “From numerous other AG opinions, we already know incentive pay is legal.”
Another issue is that ARPA is designed for lower-income people and communities of color, Turnage said.
“Across the board premium pay is problematic in the absence of written justification to (the U.S. Treasury Department),” he said. “There is no guidance on what the written justification would be. One of our justifications could be that employees were sidelined for one-third of their pay for several weeks during the height of the pandemic and had their pay reduced by about 25 percent.”
Turnage recommended several ways to handle the issue: not giving incentive pay at all, give it only to employees who are hourly and overtime or give incentive pay to hourly employees and then give a raise to department heads.
Chief Financial Officer James Brigham recommended the third option.
“We can definitely do it,” he said. “We will do a one-time payment for the (hourly) employees. For the (department heads) we would figure out what that adjustment would be between now and the end of the fiscal year.”
Brigham characterized the raises as “temporary” for the department heads.
“We would figure it out for increments for the rest of the fiscal year, then at the end of the fiscal year we take that out,” he said.
Turnage said making a one-time payment to the department heads would qualify as a bonus, which is illegal under state law.
“You don’t want to make a one-time payment with money that is considered a pay raise, because that smells a lot like a bonus,” Turnage said. “I don’t think we want to do something that looks like we’re just trying to pass around one alternative to get to another.”
“So legally and financially we’re good?” Ward 5 Councilman Stephen Jones asked Brigham and Turnage.
Brigham and Turnage agreed they were, in fact, good.
Turnage, speaking to The Dispatch this morning, said it is legal to give a temporary raise to public employees.
“I don’t know of any law that would require an increase in pay to be permanent, especially if it’s stated to be temporary,” he said.
Originally city employees had to sign a form to get the payment. Turnage asked for the signatures to make sure that employees understood that the payment was contingent on being approved by the attorney general.
About 30 employees did not sign, Turnage said Tuesday night. The cost for the incentive pay for the employees who signed was around $650,000.
However, since the AG’s opinion never materialized, the council decided to give all employees the incentive pay regardless of whether they signed.
“For the employees who worked on the front line during COVID, I don’t want anyone to miss out on $3,000 just because they didn’t sign,” said Ward 1 Councilwoman Ethel Taylor Stewart. “There is no merit now in them signing. I would like them to get it whether they signed it or not.”
Brigham agreed.
“The spirit of the ARPA money was to reward employees that worked during COVID and suffered during COVID,” he said. “As an outsider I find it interesting that we took something that should have been a wonderful benefit for our employees and turned it into some sort of craziness of signing papers. If somebody doesn’t want the check, I can void it in a heartbeat.”
Stewart moved to give the payments, and Beard seconded. It passed 5-1, with Ward 3 Councilman Rusty Greene casting the lone no vote.
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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