38-614. Merit awards; county employees; merit award system board; special merit award fund

A. A county board of supervisors may adopt rules and regulations to provide merit awards for county employees. The rules and regulations shall include granting a merit award for any of the following:

1. An adopted procedure or idea which resulted in eliminating or reducing county expenditures or improving operations in the public interest.

2. The performance of a special act or service in the public interest.

B. If the board of supervisors permits merit awards it shall appoint a merit award system board to establish policy for the operation of the merit award system, review all suggestions and recommend for approval all merit awards with the concurrence of the head of the department in which the cost savings is realized. The size of the merit award system board shall be equal to the number of supervisors for that county. Each supervisor shall appoint one member to serve on the merit award system board.

C. The board of supervisors shall approve all merit awards.

D. No merit award may exceed two thousand five hundred dollars.

E. The board of supervisors shall establish and may fund for the purpose of this section a special merit award fund consisting of identified measurable dollar savings transferred from appropriated and nonappropriated monies in the department where the cost saving is realized.

F. The board of supervisors may at the end of each fiscal year transfer all or part of the monies accumulated in the special merit award fund to the county general fund.

G. The merit award system board shall certify to the board of supervisors the names of persons recommended for merit awards and the amounts of the awards. On final approval by the board of supervisors of the names and the amounts of the merit awards, the county finance director shall draw a warrant on the county treasury. The county treasurer shall pay the warrant from the special merit award fund.

H. All county employees are eligible for merit awards, except that the qualifying criteria prescribed in subsection A are not met as a result of the employee's regular employment duties and an award is not considered extra compensation.