Retroactive payments of compensation to county employees have always been prohibited by the Texas Constitution. Or at least long enough that its as good as always.

But the ARPA authorized counties to use those funds to provide retroactive premium pay to certain employees who provided essential work during the pandemic.

Does this authorization in ARPA overrule the Texas Constitutional prohibition? I don't want to piss off a lot of employees but I would like to see something in black and white (or any other set of colors) that tells me to chill out.

We had that request made of our County as part of our recent CBA negotiations and we took the position that the Constitutional prohibition against retro pay was not (and could not be) overridden by the permissive language of the ARPA funding legislation.

quote:

Originally posted by DGremillion:
We had that request made of our County as part of our recent CBA negotiations and we took the position that the Constitutional prohibition against retro pay was not (and could not be) overridden by the permissive language of the ARPA funding legislation.

Thanks for the reply. That has been my position.

FWIW, I believe that is also the position of TAC's lawyers: no additional compensation for services already rendered.