Attorney responds to criticism
Weston County Deputy Attorney Jeani Stone responded to recent criticism of the lack of progress on projects, including an employee handbook, during the Oct. 4 Board of Weston County Commissioners meeting.
“You have had years of dysfunction and lack of good work on your employee handbook and HR (human relations) issues. So, I’m going in and trying to fix years of dysfunction,” Stone told the board.
She also criticized Commissioner Don Taylor for not calling her personally to discuss his concerns before addressing them publicly. She did note that she could have had better communication with the board, but that she was attempting to keep her illness private.
Taylor had questioned Stone’s work on the employee handbook, along with Vice Chairman Nathan Todd and Commissioner Ed Wagoner, during the board’s Sept. 20 meeting. He referenced the March 2022 agreement with Stone that was approved in a 3-2 split vote (Chairwoman Marty Ertman and Commissioners Tony Barton and Wagoner voted in favor and Commissioners Taylor and Todd were against), the board voted to enter a four-month $20,180 agreement with Stone. The proposal was suggested and prepared by Stone.
The agreement listed various issues Stone planned to address over that period, including the employee handbook, personnel issues, board training, contract review and other duties. Stone also continued working as the deputy county attorney while taking on the additional public relations/human resource duties included in the agreement.
As part of the agreement, Stone’s salary increased from $5,000 a month to $7,500 a month for four months. The total cost for this increase, including benefits, was $10,901, according to her proposal.
The agreement also included the addition of a part-time secretarial position for the same period. The total cost for this position was listed at $6,279 in the proposal.
Also included in the agreement was a $3,000 line item for training and consulting fees. This line item would “allow for trainers and consultants/facilitators to come in and present on various topics” and to “aid in task completion.”
The commissioners participated in a board training, set up by Stone, with Jerimiah Rieman, executive director of the Wyoming County Commissioners Association, on April 19.
Per the four-month time frame, the commissioners expected to have the employee handbook and contract with the city for consideration in June.
“In June we met and at that time I indicated I had a draft done. I was hoping to set a time to go over the different policies and things with you in a workshop or several workshops,” Stone said on Oct. 4. “At that time, you guys had asked me to get with the department heads and electeds.”
And, according to Stone, that is exactly what she had been doing – before health issues put her out of work. Until then, she said, she had been collecting feedback on the manual and policies, noting that this process had snowballed the project into something bigger than she had anticipated.
Stone said that on top of general confusion about some of the policies in the handbook, including sick and vacation time requirements and compensation time policies, there were issues with policies not including specific protected classes that are required under federal regulations.
“The comp time cap, we need to watch it. If an employee does quit and has hours racked up. The county can’t afford to pay that out,” Clerk Becky Hadlock said. “That’s why that was put in there (the handbook).”
In addition, Stone said that different departments have policies specific to the individual offices – employee termination requirements for the Weston County Sheriff’s Office versus other county offices, in particular, were mentioned.
“I am trying to create a comprehensive proposal,” Stone said, noting that she wants to address as many issues as possible. “Here is what we have, here is what I think needs added, and here are things that weren’t up to the current federal regs.”
She noted that there is also a need for the elected officials and department heads to be trained on these policies.
“I appreciate the work you are doing. I guess what I didn’t realize is how many years of this problem there is,” Taylor said, noting that the Local Government Liability Pool had approved the county’s employee handbook.
He continued, stating that it was concerning that the county had all these problems and had let them go for so long. Taylor also said it was concerning that the insurance approved the handbook if there were so many problems.
“The LGLP made recommendations for changes, and nobody did that. Nobody changed it.
It is great it got approved, but no one made the changes and the employees didn’t sign off on it. That’s a problem, right?” Stone responded.
She noted the years of dysfunction she has seen in county government. Stone mentioned several contracts that the county has had issues with on top of the handbook — including a dispatch contract that has been a topic of discussion for nearly eight years —, issues with human relations and lack of training for employees.
“I want to put the work in. I want to make a really good product,” Stone said. “So, Don, what I would say is I’m sorry I didn’t get it done the last couple months, but it has snowballed into this bigger issue and I’m trying to make everything mesh. Hopefully you’re going to have a good handbook and eight electeds and department heads that know how to apply it.”
Taylor and Todd both acknowledged that the biggest issue was the lack of communication on what was going on.
“Frankly, it is our fault
we allowed it to snowball,” Taylor said.
Ertman added that the employee handbook was last updated in 2016, and it took two years to complete, noting that she believed at the time that the county had done
good work.
“Look around at what the administration has done in this building. We have had four clerks and three county attorneys. We had a county administrator, and then we didn’t have a county administrator,” she said. “The continuation finds every one of those stop gaps. Business goes on, life goes on and each office has adapted.”
