The Inter-Mountain photo by Brad Johnson From left, Randolph County Commissioners David Kesling, Mark Scott and Chris See listen to a presentation during Thursday afternoon’s commission meeting at the James Cain Courthouse Annex in Elkins.

The Inter-Mountain photo by Brad Johnson
From left, Randolph County Commissioners David Kesling, Mark Scott and Chris See listen to a presentation during Thursday afternoon’s commission meeting at the James Cain Courthouse Annex in Elkins.

ELKINS — The Randolph County Commission addressed seniority pay for county law enforcement officers on Thursday.

“We have discussed as a commission what to do with the seniority pay regarding our law enforcement,” Commission President Mark Scott said during Thursday’s regularly scheduled commission meeting. “From our conversations a couple things have come up and I’ve done some research into how seniority pay is handled from county to county.

“Counties are given broad discretion about what to do with seniority pay,” Scott said. “So it really varies from county to county as to how they pay seniority pay, who they pay seniority pay to and the amounts of seniority pay.

In Randolph County, “our deputies have the last few years received a higher level of seniority pay then our regular employees,” he noted. “Our regular employees have received $60 per year, beginning in their second year of service, so over the years they continue to receive it. Over the last several years, our deputies have received $100 per year in seniority pay in year one, and then for each year thereafter.”

On Thursday, commissioners voted to approve an amendment to the county employee handbook regarding seniority pay.

“We are considering making a change to our personnel policy that codifies the fact that our regular county employees receive $60 per year and our deputies receive $100 per year,” Scott said. “There’s a couple reasons for this.

“Number one, our deputies — everyday they go on the job, they are risking their lives. They get into difficult situations all the time,” he added. “As we see, the risk is real. We see reports every day where law enforcement officers are losing their lives in the line of duty.

“In addition to that, we have a very difficult time retaining seasoned law enforcement officers,” Scott said. “So by having a hire level of longevity pay for our deputies, it really serves as a retention tool. When you lose a seasoned deputy, you generally have to replace them with someone who has no experience, who has to go through training, and it’s a tremendous amount of cost in that.

“So we’ve looked at our policy and considered continuing our seniority pay as we have for the past few years,” Scott said, adding that the vote would “make a change to our personnel manual to reflect the change in seniority pay.”

The vote passed unanimously.

Newly elected Sheriff Rob Elbon took office on Dec. 31. As of mid-December, the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office had 14 full-time deputies and one part-time deputy.