Commissioners put HR move on hold until next meeting

Gonzales County commissioners will have to wait one more meeting to decide whether to create a Human Resources (HR) position under the direction of the Commissioners Court due to a problem with wording on their March 11 agenda.

The wording had commissioners considering moving HR to come under the auspices of County Judge Pat Davis, but the consensus in their last meeting was it should fall under the court. They agreed to pass on the item so it could be placed on the next agenda with the correct verbiage.

There was still some discussion among the court, however, about whether the court even should consider moving HR out from County Auditor Becky Weston’s office before commissioners are scheduled to begin working on the next fiscal budget later this year.

“Are we sure we want to do this before budget time?” Precinct 2 Commissioner Donnie Brzozowski asked. “We're gonna hire another employee and it’s probably going to cost us $100,000 by the time we get through moving around and buying the stuff that we need. I haven't had any problems with human resources.

“If the commissioners wanted to make a decision, I think we need to go into an executive session to discuss what’s going on because we can’t make an informed decision, and all of a sudden, we want to jump up and move it out of the auditor's office and spend that much of the taxpayers’ money at this time and we’d have to do a budget amendment. I don’t think there’s any way the commissioners can make an informed judgment on this unless we know the facts and why we’re doing it.”

Davis brought up moving HR under his office at the Feb. 26 meeting and both Davis and County Attorney Paul Watkins said other county employees have expressed concerns about interacting with HR when it is located under the same office (County Auditor) where payroll is done. Precinct 1 Commissioner K.O. “Dell” Whiddon told commissioners he thought HR should fall under the court as a whole, a sentiment that the rest of the court agreed with at that time.

Davis said Monday he would need to speak to Watkins to determine if an executive session could be held to discuss the HR position under the Texas Open Meetings Act and also expressed uneasiness talking about private matters that were confidentially told to both him and Watkins by employees.

“Well, how did you and Paul get the information, then, if it’s supposed to be private?” Brzozowski asked.

“Paul is actually an attorney for the county and there’s a thing called attorney-client relationship where you can’t say anything,” Davis replied.

“Now wait a minute — a lot of times I’ll ask Paul for something and he’ll say ‘I can’t answer that. It’s not my expertise.’ And he’ll always remind me ‘I am not the county’s attorney,’” Brzozowski said.

“He’s not the county’s attorney but he is the legal advice for the county,” Davis responded.

Brzozowski said he feels Watkins does not answer questions to the satisfaction of the court.

“Well, he dodges the questions a lot of time when I ask him and you’ve all heard the same thing,” Brzozowski said. “It's kind of like, ‘Yeah, it’s all right if it’s this way, but if I don't really like it, I don't have the expertise to handle it.’”

Davis defended Watkins, saying he will defer the county to someone with more experience answering particular questions “because it may be something that he doesn’t utilize very often, so there’s other people that we can go to for it.”

“The majority of the questions or contracts or whatever the case may be, he's very good at answering. If he can't answer it, then he’ll let us know that we probably need to look somewhere else,” Davis said. “I don’t have any problem visiting with Paul. I think he works really good with us.”

Davis pledged to make sure the item appears correctly on the next agenda. He did indicate space had been found for the HR office in the basement of the Randle Rather building.

In other action, commissioners agreed to give county employees working outside their normal duties comp time at a rate of time and a half, even if those hours were worked during a holiday week, which would usually require working a full 40 hours outside the holiday before overtime would kick in.

The matter came up after several employees had to help the Elections Administration office during early voting on Friday, March 1, which was a county holiday (Texas Independence Day).

Commissioners at first expressed concern that it might impact the sheriff’s office, which has its own way of handling pay during holiday shifts, but Sheriff Keith Schmidt assured them that if a county policy was made involving comp time instead of overtime, it would cause no impact to his deputies.