Just in case you’ve been on the fence about whether our Hamilton County government is well-oiled machine or a clunker, Thursday’s Chattanooga Times Free Press story about paying a fired magistrate $13,400 for unused vacation time should make you leap off that fence and want to throw it at somebody.
This wasn’t, by the way, just a one-off, $13,000 goof. It was, in fact, a systemic, bad-government throwaway of nearly $31,500 in taxpayer money in just one program and involving just four employees.
County officials chalk the problem up to a policy change and missing paperwork. Adding insult to injury, some commissioners are equivocating about whether the county should seek repayment of money mistakenly paid to the former jail magistrates, or just write it off. They will vote on it next Wednesday.
Commissioner Tim Boyd made the issue public this week, demanding to know why former chief magistrate Randy Russell received a payout of more than $26,000 when commissioners failed to renew his contract in May. The payout included almost $13,400 for unused vacation time that Russell shouldn’t have received after a 2013 contract change that allotted magistrates 10 days of use-or-lose yearly vacation.
As it turns out, three other former magistrates also have been paid for unused leave, and two now serving have accumulated time off totaling more than 475 hours.