Brady says investigation findings are false and all employees were directed to complete timesheets precisely
Henderson County Judge-Executive Brad Schneider announced Monday morning that the Fiscal Court will pay more than $200,000 to 223 current and former employees of the Henderson County Detention Center after a Kentucky Department of Workplace Standards investigation found that the jail violated state statutes regarding the proper recording of hours worked and payment for overtime.
The department of workplace standards said the violations occurred during former Jailer Amy Brady’s tenure at HCDC when jail deputies were not paid for pre-shift briefings, post-shift time spent filling reports or waiting for the next shift to come on duty, Schneider said.
Brady, however, maintains that the claims made in Schneider’s announcement and the findings of the workplace standards report are false.
Brady, who retired in 2022, told the Hendersonian by phone that the policy at the jail was that each employee was required to fill out his or her timesheet precisely and that employee would be paid for the time recorded. If an employee sat for a pre-shift briefing at 6:47 a.m., he or she was expected to write that exact time, and the same for the exact times of breaks, lunches and the end of the shift, she said.
She retrieved an email dated June 7, 2021, that went to all jail staff from the county finance director and said employees get paid for what they record on the time sheet.
She said this is a reiteration of what had occurred in her tenure. In addition to emails being sent, jail supervisors went to all shift briefings and explained the timesheet process and then each employee signed an acknowledgement that they’d received the information, Brady said.
She said these were examples that showed she was addressing the issue after the investigation was first requested by the judge-executive’s office in 2018.
“I have proof that I did not ignore the issue,” Brady said.
According to Schneider, Comer began receiving confidential complaints in 2018 and informed Brady that “if the complaints were true the jail was in violation of state law.” After, Comer continued to receive complaints and reached out to the department of workplace standards to investigate the issue.
Schneider said the continued complaints in exit interviews of employees leaving the jail were the reason the department of workplace standards were contacted and after the issue was turned over to them, local officials were not involved in the investigation.
Schneider said in the press conference that 223 former or current jail employees are due a total of $215,245.
County government has been directed to write checks for each affected jail employee equal to one hour per week of normal rate of pay starting on Jan. 1, 2020, and ending Dec. 31, 2023. The checks will then be sent to the department of workplace standards, which will send an acknowledgment letter to the employee that must be signed and returned to the state; after letters are received, the state will send the checks to the employees, Schneider said.
He said letters should go out by the end of the month.
A point that Schneider made is that the year 2023 is included in the compensation timeline, a year in which Brady was not serving as jailer. Brady retired Aug. 31, 2022. Ed Vaught was appointed as interim until Bruce Todd won the spot in the Nov. 2022 general election. Schneider said the timeline extends till the end of 2023, including Vaught’s and some of Todd’s time as jailer, because the statute of limitations extends back four years in these cases and the investigation was not completed until December 2024.
It is unclear why the payback timeline didn’t end on the day of Brady’s retirement. A spokesperson for the Department of Workplace Standards was contacted Monday afternoon, but she did not answer this question.
Brady said the complaints came from disgruntled employees. She said Monday she has already received numerous messages from other former HCDC employees in her support who also agreed that the statements made at the press conference were not true.
Additionally, Brady said as she was leaving her post in 2022, she sent an email to the investigator, William Hampton of the state department of workplace standards, and asked about the status of the investigation. She told the Hendersonian he replied that it was settled. She said she was surprised when she learned there would be a press conference regarding this issue.
To pay the employees, Schneider said money would be taken from the jail’s account and amended into the Fiscal Court’s budget at Tuesday’s regularly scheduled meeting.
Todd, the current jailer, installed a facial recognition time clock in which employees walk up to the screen, stand for a moment and then are alerted that “Access accepted.” The system, which went fully live on Jan. 1, 2024, records all the employees’ comings and goings, he said.
A transcript of Schneider’s remarks at the Monday morning press conference can be found on Henderson County Government Facebook page.
