While DeKalb County commission and CEO wrangle over whether they have the money to restore more than 600 jobs, one commission aide is getting a big raise to move into one of the jobs recently abolished.
The commission eliminated all vacant positions with its July budget vote, prompting the police, sheriff’s office and others to push for jobs to be restored in their departments.
The chief of staff post for Commissioner Sharon Barnes Sutton was among the vacant jobs, after the woman in the post stepped down in April.
But two weeks after the budget vote, Sutton promoted her communications director Judy Brownlee as her chief of staff. With the promotion came a $50,000 salary – a 13.4 percent raise from Brownlee’s previous job.
The promotion was approved, even though one budget official wrote in an email that with the abolished jobs, there was no post for Brownlee to be promoted into.
Another budget staffer said simply that the money was “not available.”
Sutton said in an email that filling the job was legal, since the commission abolished vacant positions only if no job offer had been made. Sutton offered Brownlee the promotion in May, and Brownlee is the only full-time employee in the office.
“We’re lucky to have her in the role of Chief of Staff,” Sutton said in her email.
County administrators agreed to the promotion after Sutton could show an offer had been made on the job.
The promotion took effect July 26. Brownlee’s raise will be three months’ retroactive, to the pay period when the offer was made.
Meanwhile, the Police Department, Sheriff's Office, animal services operation and 911 center are still waiting to see if 259 jobs will be restored to their operations. The estimated cost to do so is $14.5 million, money that would likely need to come from the county's wobbly reserves to keep the 2011 budget balanced.
The commission is scheduled to discuss those jobs at its meeting Tuesday morning in Decatur.
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