A more than two week extension was approved Tuesday by the Commissioners Court concerning the collective bargaining agreement with the Sheriff’s Office Employees Association. The extension was granted at the request of the Sheriff’s Office Employees Association.
A week ago County Judge John Gothia was hopeful of the Commissioners Court approving a signed contract with the Sheriff’s Office Employees Association in preparation of the budget for the next fiscal year. In the interim, CLEAT the union representatives for the Employees Association issued a press release that it was filing a lawsuit against Sheriff Lane Mooney and possibly other elected county officials contending the officials were not following the local government code in negotiating the contract.
The situation changed again Tuesday morning according to Judge Gothia. “They contacted with an email this morning a change to their original deal on Friday, they were asking for a 15-day extension to continue negotiations with an open meeting,” Gothia explained. “We granted the 15-day extension and we’re going to draft an email and send it to them with three optional days that they can choose to have an open public meeting with the court.”
Sheriff Mooney met with the Commissioners Court, Human Resources Director Lori Ardoin, and Assistant County Attorney Denise Gremillion in a closed executive session to discuss the Court’s response to the request from the union. The sheriff was not available for comments after the closed session.
None of the members of the Commissioners Court nor Attorney Gremillion could confirm that CLEAT had actually filed the threatened law suit in one of the three state district courts in Orange County as of Tuesday. In open session the Commissioners approved signing an engagement letter to retain without a fee an outside counsel for the ongoing collective bargaining agreement.
The Court rescinded the awarding of a contract for the grant administrator to handle an American Rescue Plan Act grant because of a clerical calculation error when the contract was first awarded to GrantWorks out of Austin. After recalculation it was determined Traylor and Associates submitted the best bid and they were awarded the contract Tuesday by the Commissioners.
-Dan Perrine, KOGT-
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