Jefferson County Tax Collector Tony Washington may have been around the block a time or two, but we’re not sure what neighborhood he’s been in.
He recently went before the Jefferson County Quorum Court to ask for a raise for his chief deputy. The rationale was that this person, at a salary of $28,000, wasn’t making nearly what other chief deputies were making, which is more in the neighborhood of $50,000.
Both the city and the county have been trying to get salaries up at least to an average of what other cities and counties are paying their people in order to hold on to good employees. So Washington’s request was understandable, and it was approved by the justices of the peace.
What was not understandable or acceptable was what came afterward.
At this week’s quorum court meeting, one of the justices of the peace, Jimmy Lee Fisher, wanted to know the name of the person he needed to congratulate for getting the raise. But Fisher became confused because the name of the chief deputy that Washington had mentioned during the previous meeting — the meeting in which he had asked for a raise for his chief deputy — was different than the name he was seeing on county paperwork.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
As it turned out, the raise was not actually for Washington’s chief deputy but for his bookkeeper.
Oops.
The justices of the peace kept a calm demeanor, but one could tell from reading the newspaper story that they were likely irked.
“I want to be cautious about when we do things,” said Fisher. “If you tell me that you’re asking for a raise for your chief deputy and then you decide the money is going to your bookkeeper, that’s wrong.”
Said Justice of the Peace Ted Hardin: “The money was not the issue; it was the fact that he changed personnel.”
Washington defended himself, saying he should be allowed to run his own department, and that included giving raises to whomever he saw fit. But that argument probably didn’t change anyone’s thinking on the subject.
Fisher said no one was trying to run Washington’s department but suggested that not knowing the full details of something they were voting on might open up the quorum court to a lawsuit.
In response, Washington said he would change the title of the bookkeeper to chief deputy. As if that would fix anything.
The problem is that, as he faced the public servants who must keep an eye on finances, he allowed them to believe one thing — that his chief deputy needs to make more money — while his intentions were to do something different. That is not the way public officials should operate, and he is lucky the quorum court didn’t claw back the raise he had asked for under less-than-honest pretenses.
The short version of this would be that if you have to ask the quorum court for something, the justices of the peace should get the whole truth and nothing but the truth.