Crisler: We Want Temp Worker Details Now

By Donna Ladd Monday, September 10, 2007 2:08 p.m. CDT

The Jackson City Council Budget Committee asked the Melton administration again Monday to cough up more information on its temporary and contract employees for the 2006-2007 fiscal year (PDF, 592 KB). "We have real basic requests about information concerning employees of the city of Jackson and the salary they made from '06 to '07," said Budget Committee Chairman Marshand Crisler. "I think I was very clear about that. The deadline was Friday, and at this particular moment we have not received that."

"I want to know everybody we're paying, and how much we're paying, and you can get us that and we want that, and we don't even want to debate this anymore," Crisler said of the temporary employee list, which includes many of Melton's mentees and his political operative Bob Hickingbottom, who visibly campaigned for new District Attorney Robert Smith.

Crisler, poised for a showdown, proposed to recess the Monday morning meeting until the Budget Committee received the information. Other committee members convinced Crisler to continue with the meeting, because members of the police department had attended expecting to discuss the police budget.

Chief Administration Officer Robert Walker said the administration had already complied with council information requests.

"The one request I remember is that regarding employees working through temp agencies. We provided that current through Sept. 6," Walker said. Those two pages only listed the agencies that employ temporary workers on one page and a listing of job titles with the hourly rate on another. The materials did not provide the requested totals paid to the temporary workers over the year, or detail who the temps are.

"We do have that list," replied Ward 7 Councilwoman Margaret Barrett-Simon, "but what we've asked for, on a number of occasions now, was the total temp workers made over the last year, not their hourly rate, but what they actually were paid as temporary or contract workers."

"But we have the hourly wages of temp workers on that list," Walker protested. "It's a simple matter of calculating traditionally, when you calculate wages on an annual basis you take the hourly salary and multiply that by 28."

Crisler told Walker the number was a bit more complicated: "I appreciate the simplicity of what Mr. Walker says, but it's not that simple. Some people work overtime. Some people work a lot more hours than you care to share with us. We need to know that. We need the total payment that went out to every temporary and contractual employee in the city of Jackson. We don't want you to go over there, and take the hourly wage, and do the math. You ought to have some document showing what every contracted and temporary employee has been paid by this city from '06 to '07. Their names should be here; the date and time should be here. It should be total payment for that employee."

It is believed that hundreds of thousands of dollars have been paid to temporary workers, many hand-picked by Melton, such as Fredrica Brunson (aka Jermaine Bulter) and Michael Taylor, two young men with armed-robbery warrants that the mayor hid from the Hinds County sheriff and the district attorney last year until they were seen on TV at a barbecue at the mayor's North Jackson home, where at least one of them was living.

Walker said the administration would work to provide a more detailed figure to the council. He added that city staff had worked over the weekend to deliver on Jackson Mayor Frank Melton's vow Thursday to produce a revised budget, which would exclude a $2.6 million tax increase, at the 4 p.m. council work session today.

"We have a balanced budget without a tax increase," Walker proclaimed, making no apologies for the four-day delay.

After disowning his own budget last week, Melton boasted to the council on Thursday that he would present the revised, tax-free budget on Fridaythough neither he nor the budget made an appearance the next day.

Crisler and the council are aware of the unpopularity of the $2.6 million tax increase, but must come to terms with a $3.4 budget shortfall. Options for closing the budget gap include the tax increase, layoffs, a tax swap, dipping into budget reserves or any combination of the four.
Melton told The Clarion-Ledger last week that his revised budget would contain $1 million in cuts to JATRAN.

With no new budget in hand, Crisler continued the regularly scheduled budget meetings for Monday.

"When the new budget comes in, we'll let the public know that we have an alternative budget, but right now this is the one we're working with," Crisler said, holding the more than 400-page document for the council to see.

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