LETTER TO THE EDITOR, Carolyn Huddleston, Liberal
Well, friends, I am delighted to report that the Seward County Commission acted in a financially responsible way yet again!! In the short couple of months that three of them have been in office, they already had: 1. quit wasting money trying to justify a tax increase none of them had been in favor of to begin with; and, 2. rewritten the budget to put spending in line with tax revenues.
Right now money is tight and employees in general aren’t getting raises. However, one group of Seward County employees, those who work for the Juvenile Correction and Prevention Services (JCAPS), wrote raises for themselves into their KDOC grant plan for the coming fiscal year. The pay at JCAPS was already significantly above that of Seward County employees in general, as I showed in a previous article.
Further, I don’t know that a word would have been said about these raises if they hadn’t been discovered. If the commission had just accepted the grant plan without reading it, the raises would have been approved without the commission knowingly authorizing them. In any case, they were discovered, and at first the director claimed the county pay plan doesn’t apply to them.
That was proven false.
The Deputy Secretary of Juvenile and Adult Community Based Services at the Kansas Department Of Corrections (KDOC) documented that these people are employees of Seward County and are supposed to be following all policies and procedures that the county has for their employees. KDOC defers to the county with respect to when the JCAPS staff should get raises. I think this means they should get raises when the rest of the Seward County employees are getting raises, and then only if those raises are justified given the county pay plan. The money that funds JCAPS isn’t Seward County tax money, but it is State of Kansas tax money.
I am proud to say it was the commissioner from my district, John Mettlen, who stepped forward and moved that these raises be removed from the grant plan. That was seconded by Commissioner Todd Stanton. Chairman Helm and Commissioner Louderback also voted in favor, while Jairo Vazquez abstained. I feel like this is a significant victory for the people — and also for the commission themselves — in that they were taking back power. If you agree with me, friends, please tell your commissioner you appreciate them having taken this action.
