Hancock County approves personnel moves, cybersecurity updates and employee assistance plan; changes overtime rules for nonunion staff

At a Dec. 16 special meeting, the Hancock County Commission approved a package of personnel actions and policy updates that included promotions, cybersecurity policy refreshes, an employee assistance plan and a change to overtime pay rules for nonunion employees.

Promotions and transfers: Commissioners approved promotion of Liberty White from part-time to full-time corrections officer effective Dec. 27, 2025, at $23.71 per hour (pay grade 9A). They also approved transferring Stacy Johnson from part-time corrections officer in Ellsworth to full-time dispatch, effective Dec. 27, 2025, with a pay rate of $28.19 (dispatch pay grade 9A). Both motions were seconded and adopted by voice vote.

Policy and cybersecurity updates: Staff explained that most of the policies under review had previously been approved and that the current action mainly added signature blocks and updated annual documents. The commission approved updates including the 2025 incident response plan, the 2025 acceptable use policy, the information security program, AI usage guidance, clean-desk policy, CJIS security policy, hardware/software acquisitions policy, security camera procedures, spam-call response policy and mandatory password policy. Staff noted a typographical error in one listing for the incident response plan year and confirmed it would be corrected.

Employee assistance plan: Commissioners reviewed a proposed TELUS Health employee assistance program (EAP) that would provide employees 24/7 access to counseling, legal and financial consultations and up to three visits per year for a range of issues. A county official explained the EAP offers faster virtual access than relying exclusively on worker’s compensation or local critical-incident teams. The commission voted to approve the TELUS Health EAP for 2026 and authorized the chair to sign.

Overtime policy change: After discussion about administrative complexity and abuse risk, the commission voted to compensate nonunion employees at time-and-a-half for hours worked outside their regular scheduled hours, even if those hours do not push them over 40 in a week. Commissioners stressed supervisory approval is required for overtime and said they will monitor departmental budgets for any increase in overtime costs.

The package of actions was approved by voice votes; staff will finalize documentation, update erroneous dates noted in the incident response list, and provide follow-up reports on use of the EAP and overtime costs.