Lake County supervisors approve changes to hiring-incentive policy, remove hard-to-fill attachment

The Lake County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to amend the county's hiring-incentive policy, redefining who qualifies as a "newly appointed" employee, removing the separate Attachment A list of hard-to-fill eligible positions, and specifying that an incentive for air quality engineers will expire on June 30, 2025.

HR Director Pam Samek told the board the administration proposed changing the definition of "newly appointed employee" to "someone who has not been employed in a permanent capacity within the last two years." Samek said the county also proposes removing the static list of qualifying positions and instead determining eligibility using the policy's hard-to-fill criteria.

The change to the newly appointed definition was explained as widening eligibility compared with the current policy. "Right now, we define newly appointed as being never been employed by the county," Samek said. "This actually opens it up and is beneficial because now if you left and have come back, in that 2 year period, you're now eligible where previously you were not."

Board members…