AUBURN - A second attempt to institute a two-week pay lag for Cayuga County employees was shot down at Tuesday's Ways and Means Committee meeting.

Members of the committee said more information was needed before they could make a decision to support the proposal. Instead, they asked County Manager Wayne Allen to have details ready for next week's full Legislature meeting for possible consideration.

Most non-bargaining county employees currently get paid a day in advance, meaning they collect pay Friday morning before working the full week.

Some non-bargaining employees, along with the sheriff's deputies and corrections officers are already lagged either one or two weeks. Negotiations are also continuing with the CSEA and the New York State Nurses Association bargaining unit to institute a lag.

If passed by the full Legislature, the lag would impact approximately 100 employees.

During the meeting, Legislator Patrick Mahunik, D-Auburn, asked what the purpose of the lag is.

“You're actually getting paid for working, not for work that you and your employer hoped you would complete,” said David Axton, R-Mentz.

While it's common for employers to do this, it is not normal to institute a lag well into employment, said chairman of the committee Francis Mitchell, R-Genoa.

Based on previous discussions, Allen came up with four options for the committee to consider. He also included a hypothetical chart showing how much people will lose in their paychecks based on what they get paid.

The first proposal would take four hours from each paycheck for 20 pay periods, totaling 10, eight-hour days. The second proposal allows employees to sell up to 10 vacation or compensatory days to replace the four-hour pay lag per pay period.

The third choice includes giving non-bargaining employees a one-time stipend from which the four-hour pay would be deducted. The final option Allen gave the legislators was to have a rolling pay day. This would mean that instead of Friday, employees would get paid on Monday and the next pay period, on Tuesday, until all employees were lagged two weeks. Employees would get that money two weeks after leaving the county.

The county should consider lagging employees one week this year and one week next year to “soften the blow,” said Chairman of the Legislature Peter Tortorici, R-Auburn.

“With the state of the economy today, people are counting on every dollar they can get in their paycheck. I support a pay lag and I believe that it will help our payroll system. ... But I would like to see maybe doing one week this year and one week next year,” he said.

Though the resolution would apply to non-bargaining employees, elected and appointed officials could volunteer to have their pay lagged, said County Attorney Frederick Westphal. This would be done on a case-by-case basis, he said, and legislators would have to sign an agreement.

Other legislators had questions about the proposed options as well.

Roger Mills, who is not on the Ways and Means Committee, asked Allen how he came up with the figures for how people would be affected.

“People would be impacted differently depending on their pay,” Mills, R-Owasco, said.

Most of the legislators present agreed they would like to see how much it will cost the county to institute the pay lag, as well as how county employees will be affected before voting on the resolution.

With a strong emphasis on the employees, Tortorici said the county should focus on a solution that will have the least impact on employees as possible.

“If it's a little work for us to alleviate the pain for employees,” Tortorici said, “then we should do it.”

Staff writer Gitana Mirochnik can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 237 or gitana.mirochnik@lee.net