Jo’s Cafe

You “reclassify” them to a higher position and refuse to call it a promotion so you won’t have to give the four of them a 5% pay increase due someone who obtains that rank.

From WTVM (Columbus, GA)

… [F]our majors in the Muscogee County Sheriff’s Department … say the new city pay plan entitled them to a 5% raise for their promotion from captain.  Columbus City Manager Isaiah Hugley says they’re not getting the raise because they weren’t promoted, but “reclassified.”  He says that decision was made by the author of the plan. 

So - you give these four men the responsibilities of a new rank, but since the City is dying in red budget hell, you refuse to pay them for it?

Oh, and the City Manager doesn’t even have the backbone to talk to the news, but shoves everything off to his assistant.

Director of Human Resources Tom Barron wouldn’t appear on camera, instead deferring to City Manager Isaiah Hugley.

“When I talked to Tom Barron, the human resources director, he indicated to me that’s not what he told them, so the truth is somewhere in between,” Hugley said. 

 Major Joe Mcrae is one of the City’s pay victims:

“Every promotion, reclassification, or whatever they’re calling it that I’ve seen done came with an increase in pay and a reclassification to the higher pay scale,” McCrae said.  “We’re the exception to that.”

Dr. Condrey also says if the city chooses to give the majors the raise, it would be treating them differently than other employees that have been reclassified.  But Major McCrae says there are 13 people in the department that have been reclassified, and everyone else has gotten a raise.

I’m starting to see why when I came back to this area after our my six year exile move to Texas my old boss told me to run the other way when I went back to get my old job.  Wonderful way to treat your law enforcement personnel.  

No wonder Former Police Chief Wetherington is running for Mayor.  If I lived in Columbus, I would vote for him.

(Chuck or Redoubt, either one of you got Wetherington’s website link?  I can’t find it.)

Redoubt for Jim Wetherington’s website link. 

Redoubt expounds on this here.