Tazewell County Clerk John Ackerman narrowly dodged a formal county board censure last night.
The board voted 9 to 8 against censure, with one abstention. At issue was Ackerman's approval of raises for his employees organized under the Teamsters outside of their collective bargaining agreement through the fee funds he controls.
County board members said last fall they felt blindsided by those raises, which were implemented after the annual county budget was already passed. Ackerman holds using the fee funds didn't impact the county budget negatively.
The county board's censure proposal also claimed Ackerman dented morale and placed the county in "future financial peril." Other county employees in different departments represented by the Teamsters have filed a grievance.
Board member Russ Crawford said Ackerman's move was "a stick in the eye," but argued a censure would only make the situation worse.
"It still leaves all the problems we talked about with the collective bargaining and the precedent and all that. John might even want to do it a third year next year," he said. "We need to fix it. And it's not hard to fix."
He suggested a meeting between Ackerman, County Administrator Wendy Ferrill, and Tim Neuhauser, chair of the county board's finance committee, to sort it out.
Board member Brandon Hovey said he was saddened by the situation.
"I don't think we would have had these problems had we been more open in our communication. We need to talk more," he said to Ackerman. "And sometimes that means maybe being a little more transparent. You campaigned on transparency."
The board also approved spending $8,000 for an operational review of how all departments are spending fee fines, and voted down Ackerman's request to place a cargo container behind the Tazewell County Emergency Management Agency building in Tremont to store election equipment currently held by individual townships.
