I attended the July 31, 2025 Camden County Commission meeting at 10:15 a.m.
All commissioners were present.
The first agenda item was “SB40 Board Appointment – Mary Hayslett.”
The Commission approved this appointment to the SB40 Board unanimously.
The second agenda item was “Employee Handbook Revisions.”
The development of an Employee Handbook for Camden County has been an ongoing project for at least the last four years, maybe more.
Commissioner Dougan commented that he would like to stop distinguishing between sick and vacation time and just have PTO time accrued by employees. He would also want a cap on the amount of PTO time that can be accumulated.
County Auditor Laughlin recommended that any PTO policy changes should be made at the beginning of the year so employees could start fresh with the new policies in a new year. His office would have to contact the vendor who handles their payroll software to insert the changes into the system. There would also have to be a decision on how to deal with time that has already been accumulated.
Dougan confirmed that the current version of the Employee Handbook is January 5, 2022. He said that they need to review the handbook at least annually and determine if it needs to be revised.
The elected officials who were present seemed to agree with the proposed revisions.
Presiding Commissioner Skelton stressed that they needed to make some policy changes as soon as possible. County employees were getting paid large cash payments when they retired, were terminated, or quit and cashed out their accumulated time. Skelton didn’t think it was fair that an employee could accumulate time at a lower pay rate early in their career and then cash it out at their highest pay rate when they left county employment years later.
Skelton also confirmed that the policy section that would allow the county to search its employees should be removed from the handbook. He agreed with the county’s ability to search desk and office property, but did not agree with searching the personal property of the employees.
Another new policy would involve Administrative Leave. If an employee was on Administrative Leave for 5 or more days, they would not qualify to accrue and sick or vacation benefits.
The new changes would allow employees to cash out half of their accrued sick leave benefits as long as they have:
- 10 or more years of service and are retiring under LAGERS or
- 20 or more years of service and separated in good standing or
- upon the death of an employee with 10 or more years of service and vested in LAGERS.
Employees would now sign that they knew where the Employee Handbook online link was located.
Going forward, it would be the responsibility of the employees to know what their maximum caps are for sick time accrual. These maximum caps on time will be enforced.
Vacation time will not be substituted for sick time until all sick time has been exhausted.
Presiding Commissioner Skelton observed that some employees were not at work, but were still getting paid. All employees would be required to clock in and clock out. Any deviation from this would be considered theft. Skelton pointed out that any fraud or abuse of time should be reported to the County Attorney and reporters would be protected as whistle blowers in accordance with Missouri statutes.
Commissioner Gohagan stated that time card fraud has been a “well-known problem” in the county and it needs to stop.
Sheriff Edgar said that his department had recently terminated an employee for cause and they had to issue a large check to pay out the sick time benefits to that employee. He felt this set a bad example for the other employees. This wasn’t allowed in county employee policies prior to 2022.
Presiding Commissioner Skelton wanted to change the sick time payout policy right away. County Assessor Marty McGuire agreed with these proposals, but asked that the Employee Handbook Committee be given the opportunity to review and discuss the PTO policy.
The Commission adopted the revisions and updates to the Camden County Handbook discussed at this meeting (with the exception of the PTO policy) unanimously.
And that was that.
Among the Dogwoods 