fbpx

Court Orders County to Compensate Deputies for Back Pay

By Beacon Staff

A district court judge has issued a judgment that Flathead County owes a group of sheriff’s deputies three years of back pay after salary miscalculations, awarding them roughly $237,000.

Thirty-four deputies successfully sued the county with the claim that their salaries had not gone up proportionally when the sheriff’s base pay was increased by $2,000 by the state Legislature. Deputies’ salaries are determined as a percentage of the sheriff’s salary.

District Judge Katherine Curtis ruled in favor of the deputies’ union on April 9, ordering the county to pay $206,087 in unpaid wages, along with a 15 percent penalty, bringing the total to $237,001.

Curtis also ordered the county to pay the deputies’ attorney’s fees, totaling $78,210.

Flathead County Administrator Mike Pence said the county also plans to pay back wages owed to 35 deputies who did not sign on to the lawsuit but worked during that three-year period, totaling $136,361 and bringing the grand total of payments to about $451,570.

“If it’s legal and fair to pay one group of deputies, we decided it’s only fair to pay them all,” Pence said Thursday.

That money will come out of the sheriff’s operating balance fund, Pence said, and if that fund doesn’t adequately cover the cost, the county will use money from other accounts. The county has been anticipating this outcome and has made contingency plans, Pence said.

Dave Kauffmann, president of the Flathead County Deputies Union, said the deputies were hoping for higher damages to account for the interest their money would have accrued if it hadn’t been tied up in court, but they would accept Curtis’ ruling.

The lawsuit could have been avoided, Kauffmann said, if county officials had agreed on a re-calculation formula for back wages when the original error was found. But when compensation negotiations between deputies and the county failed, the deputies had no choice but to file suit to protect their interests, Kauffmann said.

Kauffmann said the process cost “unnecessary time and expenditures for everyone involved,” and that it was a huge undertaking to go back and account for each deputy’s earnings.

“It’s just been kind of a long uphill battle,” he said.

Kauffmann also noted that the money paid out to the deputies will vary on their rank and time spent employed at the sheriff’s office.

Both sides of the lawsuit have a 60-day period from April 9 to appeal the district court’s ruling, but neither has indicated they will do so.

Pence said the county would cut checks to the deputies within several days of the 60-day waiting period.

Deputies in Lewis and Clark County filed and won a similar lawsuit in 2006.