The 12-member executive board of the Arkansas Association of Quorum Courts voted Friday to recommend changes to a 2009 state law that adjusted the pay ranges for county employees to include justices of the peace, which were erroneously left out of the legislation.
All 10 of the present members voted in favor Friday on an afternoon conference call. Elwanda Templeton of Jackson County and Bobby Burns of White County were not participating in the call.
The 2009 law, which went into effect Jan. 1, 2011, increased minimum and maximum salaries and meeting compensation for all elected county officers by 3 percent.
The minimum per-meeting payment for a justice of the peace is $125. In counties of fewer than 70,000 people, justices of the peace cannot make more than $8,734 in a calendar year. That maximum is $10,376 in counties of 70,000 to 199,999 people and $13,319 in counties of 200,000 or more people.
A 3 percent change, which Association of Arkansas Counties Executive Director Chris Villines said was initially favored as a way of adjusting for inflation since the original figures were set, would increase the minimum per-meeting payment to $128.75 and the maximums to $8,996.02, $10,687.28 and $13,718.57.
In an opinion issued Dec. 18, Attorney General Dustin McDaniel's office wrote that justices of the peace were not considered "elected county officers" the way the legislation was written. The opinion was written in response to a question on whether the law applied to justices of the peace by state Rep. David Fielding, D-Magnolia.
Assistant Attorney General J.M. Barker wrote that the law indicates justices of peace are "township officers."
Justices of the peace were thus not included in the 3 percent change to pay ranges, said Jonathan Greer, general counsel for the Association of Arkansas Counties. He told the board that the law's intention was to include justices of the peace.
"It just didn't get drafted right," Villines said.
Villines and Greer said most counties would not have any problems adjusting to the change.
The Association of Quorum Courts' vote recommends the change to the Association of Arkansas Counties. The counties association's Legislative Committee will now consider it for its 2015 legislative lobbying package.
Metro on 09/06/2014