Franklin Co. To Match Contributions to Employee Retirement Plan

By MJ Kneiser, WLHR Radio, Lavonia

Some Franklin County employees are happier now that the county’s Board of Commissioners has agreed to contribute Franklin County’s annual match to the employees’ retirement plan.

At the commission’s regular meeting last Monday, some employees pushed Franklin County to correct the oversight.

The issue has to do with one of the three Franklin County retirement plans called the 457K.

Franklin County Clerk of Superior Court Missy Holbrooks said that the county’s match for 2015 was due at the beginning of the year and has not been paid.

“We’ve gone four months and we brought it to your County Manager’s attention in March and you all didn’t know anything about it. Y’all didn’t know it hadn’t been paid,” Holbrooks told the Board.

Holbrooks presented the Board with a memo from 2002 sent from the then sitting Commission to employees that stated the 41 employees who subscribed to the plan would be paid annual dividends.

Franklin County Commission Chair Thomas Bridges said the non-payment was an oversight and the county would correct it.

“If I recall correctly, two weeks ago I told you we were going to do the honorable thing and take care of the situation,” Thomas told Holbrooks.

“Yes sir, but it has not been done,” replied Holbrooks.

According to Franklin County Manager Beth Thomas, when the non-payment was brought to her attention, she did some research and found no mention of the annual 457K dividend payments in the employee handbook and no record of them in previous audits.

Thomas said when the county employee handbook was revised in 2014, a paragraph concerning Franklin County’s contribution to the plan was omitted.

As a result, she said the 2015 contribution had not been made.

“We have a plan that says you have to determine this every year,” Thomas told the Board. “And you have 16 employees who have been giving to this same plan and have not been given these same benefits. My recommendation is that you make everybody in this plan whole, and that means everybody. I don’t think you have to make any other recommendations except that you correct the handbook.”

After hearing from Thomas, the Board voted unanimously to make the 2015 contribution.

They then voted to put the omitted paragraph explaining the retirement plan back in the employee handbook.