Clik here to view.
The Supreme Court of Georgia is set to hear arguments this week in a civil case between the Clerk of Superior Court in Chatham County and the board that issues his paychecks.
The Chatham County commission has appealed a June 2015 order from Superior Court Judge Charles Rose of the Atlantic Circuit in Hinesville, who ruled that Superior Court Clerk Dan Massey is entitled to local cost-of-living adjustments and attorneys fees.
Massey originally filed suit against the county in December 2014, alleging that the county had passed him over for state cost-of-living adjustments, a state-mandated increase in his salary when the county’s population rose above 250,000 and for 5 percent longevity increases when he was re-elected to his second and third terms in 2009 and 2013.
Massey’s attorney, Steve Scheer of Savannah, has argued the oversight essentially decreased the clerk’s pay.
But county attorneys have countered that because of an error, Massey instead received local cost-of-living adjustments that actually netted the clerk a higher payment than the one to which he was entitled by law.
“The County acknowledges that its method of calculating the clerk’s salary omitted two longevity adjustments,” county attorneys wrote in a brief last spring. “Simultaneously, the County incorrectly miscalculated the clerk’s salary to include 17.5 percent (county COLAs). The result of including County COLAs created a salary of $130,522, which is greater than the amount the Clerk would have received if only the State COLAs and longevity were applied.”
But the final order issued by Judge Rose, who was brought in to hear the case after all the judges in Chatham Superior Court recused themselves, determined the county should have paid Massey not only the state cost-of-living adjustments and the longevity increases but also the local cost-of-living adjustments it had already inadvertently paid him.
“It is clear the intent of the Local Act was to grant certain elected officials, to include (Massey), the same increases in salary that it grants as COLAs to county employees,” his June 2015 order reads.
The case will be one of two that has been scheduled for oral arguments during a special session of the state Supreme Court. The session begins at 2 p.m. Thursday on the fourth floor courtroom of the Savannah Law School, 516 Drayton St.
