A second Putnam County employee requested a bonus Tuesday at the commissioners office at the Putnam County Courthouse. The request came in response to a July 25 bonus issued to the county maintenance supervisor.
Craig Kelly | The Lima News
OTTAWA — Two weeks after facing questions from a county judge over a recently awarded $25,000 performance bonus, Putnam County commissioners faced another round of questions on the same subject from another county employee.
Putnam County assistant prosecutor Nicole Smith met Tuesday with commissioners John Schlumbohm and Vince Schroeder to request a $25,000 bonus for her time working in both the municipal court and the juvenile court. The amount of the bonus request came from a bonus awarded July 25 by county commissioners to county maintenance supervisor Tim Schnipke for “additional management duties performed at the fairgrounds during the rehabilitation of the grandstand and the construction of the new event center,” according to minutes from the July 25 meeting.
“There was a total of 77 weeks in the time frame where we had vacancies in the juvenile prosecutor position,” Smith said. “When those vacancies occurred, I was serving as the full-time municipal prosecutor as well as the full-time juvenile prosecutor. So that meant that not only was I covering the full-time municipal court docket, but I was also responsible for the full-time juvenile court docket, handling all hearings and all matters, both juvenile and adult, during that period of time.”
Smith cited a lack of applicants interested in practicing law in a rural setting as one of the main reasons why that position was not filled during that time frame, along with the lower pay rate offered to attorneys in the prosecutor’s office.
“We have historically been paid lower, and the argument has been made that we’re a smaller county and we have a smaller caseload,” she said. “However, when you have somebody who gets a four-year bachelor’s degree and then goes and gets a three-year juris doctorate and they come out sometimes with $400,000 in debt and they’re telling them, ‘We’re going to pay you $50,000 or $60,000 annually,’ they’ve got to pay back their student loans as well as find a way to live.”
This request comes two weeks after Probate and Juvenile Court Judge Michael Borer made a request for an increase to his payroll budget by that same amount for him to pass on to his staff, saying that commissioners set the precedent by rewarding Schnipke for his performance. On Tuesday, Schlumbohm and Schroeder emphasized their responsibility as commissioners to be effective stewards of the public funds to which they have been entrusted.
“We represent the taxpayers and we try to keep our expenses [down], just like in the workplace or in industry,” Schroeder said.
Smith made the argument during the meeting that her work in both positions saved the county money during that time. Additionally, she noted that from 2020 to 2023, her office had returned money allocated to the office through the Furtherance of Justice Fund, a fund created by statute that provides sheriff’s office and prosecutors with additional funds to cover expenses related to their official duties.
“We returned over $47,000 during that time frame,” she said. “So in that same time frame where I’m working as two full-time prosecutors and asking basically for $25,000, I’m fundamentally asking for roughly half of what my office would have returned through FOJ funds.”
Schlumbohm and Schroeder also noted that since Schnipke is in a position under the direct supervision of the board of commissioners, they were better able to make the determination that the bonus was justified.
“The other bonus was paid out for work above and beyond the typical job duties,” Schlumbohm said. “That person was directly under our supervision, so we could do that, but she is not under our direct supervision.”
To that end, Schlumbohm told Smith during the meeting that this request needs to come from the head of her department, County Prosecutor Gary Lammers. No meeting has yet been set in this matter.
