The amount the Carroll County E-911 Department has paid into the county fund for workers’ compensation the past three years has dwarfed all other departments.

E-911 has considerably fewer employees than most departments, those employees work exclusively at a desk in an office and the department has only had one workers’ compensation claim in recent history.

The amount earmarked for workers’ compensation in the proposed 2009-2010 budget exceeds $215,000 on a departmental budget of $1.7 million. This money serves to cover a department with fewer than 30 employees.

Every year, each county department contributes a certain amount of money into an all-encompassing general workers’ compensation account.

According to Human Resources Director Anne Lee, each contributed amount is based on the number of employees in that department and the likelihood that those employees could be injured doing their jobs. All Carroll County claims that year are paid by Association County Commissioners of Georgia, according to an agreement the association has with participating counties. The county then refunds ACCG from the general workers’ compensation account.

Should that account run dry due to an unforeseen number of claims, money from an additional $1.6 million reserve account would be available should the board vote to tap into it. Should an individual claim exceed $200,000, said County Comptroller Don Johnson, it would be covered in its entirety by ACCG insurance.

Though the county has only had to pay on one worker’s compensation claim within E-911 this decade - for less than $10,000 - it still pays annually hundreds of thousands of dollars more than any other department into the general workers’ compensation account.

Comparatively, the amount earmarked for workers’ compensation in the proposed budget for the Sheriff’s Office is set at less than $50,000 for the 2009-2010 fiscal year, although the department has 188 employees, many of whom are potentially in the line of fire each and every day. The Fire and Rescue Department, with about 110 positions, is scheduled to pay $34,500 for the upcoming fiscal year.

The Tax Commissioner’s Office, a department that requires similar although much less hectic work as E-911, is scheduled to pay $1,200 for 14 employees should the Board of Commissioners pass Chairman Bill Chappell’s proposed budget on June 9.

Not including the proposed budget, the E-911 department is anticipated to pay more than $525,000 to the county’s general workers’ compensation fund from July 2006 to July of this year, more than three times the amount paid by the Sheriff’s Office, the Fire and Rescue Department and the Tax Commissioner’s Office combined.

In the 2005-2006 fiscal year, the E-911 department paid a little more than $1,300 into the county’s overall workers’ compensation fund. The year before that, it paid $1,500. In the 2006-2007 fiscal year, though, the amount contributed by E-911 into the general account ballooned by a staggering 15,700 percent to $208,927.

The reason for the huge jump, said Johnson, is rooted in the audit at the end of the 2005-2006 fiscal year by Carrollton-based accounting firm Garrett, Stephens, Thomas & Fazio PC. According to Johnson, the firm saw that the department was underpaying into the county’s general worker’s compensation fund. Because of the nature of the work, he said, the auditors told the county the E-911 department could require hundreds of thousands of dollars in workers’ compensation claims in the coming years and should pay into the general account accordingly.

“We’re budgeting what the auditors said we needed to cover claims. They said [E-911 operators’] jobs or what they have to do out there ... They’re having to talk to people on the phone who are stressed. The auditors said we weren’t applying enough money considering the job they do,” Johnson said. “They have the potential to have a lot of claims.”

Julie George of Garrett, Stephens, Thomas & Fazio said she could not comment until after she spoke with the owner of the firm who is out of town until Monday.

Former E-911 Director Debra Lanier said that regardless of who is responsible for the increase in the E-911 department’s workers’ compensation line item, it’s ridiculous to say that department’s employees hold more potential liability than those of other public safety departments. Chappell fired Lanier and Fire Chief Gary Thomas several weeks ago in a plan to combine the two departments.

“We sit at a desk. We’re not out fighting fires or getting shot at,” Lanier said. “It just doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know why it could possibly be that high.”

Every year, the Board of Commissioners votes to extend the service charge on cell phones and land lines that will go toward the local 911 center, and in mid-April, the board once again voted to establish an annual charge of $1 for all county cell-phone customers and $1.50 for those with a land line.

This money is earmarked specifically for operations and salaries at the 911 center, as outlined in the Official Code of Georgia Annotated section 46-5-133. At no point in the list of available uses for the revenue generated by the E-911 Department - called the Emergency Telephone System Fund - does it say that departmental revenues may go to pay benefits or workers’ compensation premiums for any county employment outside of the E-911 department.

In fact, it says just the opposite.

The law says that money from the Emergency Telephone System Fund must go to the “actual cost of salaries, including benefits, of employees hired by the local government solely for the operation and maintenance of the emergency ‘911’ system and the actual cost of training such of those employees who work as dispatchers.”

But Johnson said the county could use E-911 funds for the general workers’ compensation account for the simple reason that the department is not self-sufficient. Every year, the county must pay a certain amount to keep the department afloat, as expenditures are always higher than annual revenues. For the fiscal year ending this June, Johnson said, the county had to transfer $400,000 from the general fund to help pay for E-911. On top of that, he said, the department has yet to pay the county back fully for the building in which it currently operates.

According to former Carroll County Attorney David Basil, it’s not so much a question of whether the county has the authority to refund general fund dollars with E-911 revenues so much as it calls into question the consistency of the budgetary process.

It further raises the question, he said, of why the county is straining the E-911 department’s revenues to finance the countywide workers’ compensation account - which is part of the general fund - when in fact the county will have to turn around and contribute money from the general fund simply to keep the E-911 department above water.

“Anytime you undertake a budgetary process, it’s important to be consistent with your reasoning and your logic and your application of expenditures. If they are dividing expenditures evenly among departments, then that would be consistent,” Basil said. “The question is, is it consistent with their approach and is it consistent in the context of this particular revenue stream? I don’t know.”

But Commissioner Trent North said the answer was clear. Not only is it ridiculous that the county charge one department such an amount for workers’ compensation but it should have never been adjusted to such a high level in the first place, he said.

“That is baffling. I just don’t buy that response from Don [Johnson],” North said. “I don’t understand why there was $200,000 budgeted for workman’s comp, and if the auditors were the ones who requested we do it, that’s well and good. They always make requests to the board. Sometimes the board listens to them. Sometimes we don’t. I’m just baffled we’ve set it at $200,000 because we have data not just going back one year but two years and three years and four years and five years. We have our own data, and we can see that there’s no need for us to set aside $200,000 or anything close to that in this account. It doesn’t make any sense at all.”

Chappell did not return several phone calls seeking comment.