The CCAWV Board of Directors met on opening day and added three new issues to our list of supported legislative proposals and one to those we oppose:

1. CCAWV will seek passage of a bill granting advice and consent authority to county commissioners for employee firings in all county offices. Current law grants advice and consent authority to commissioners on the hiring of all county employees and the effort is to require approval on firings so that proper legalities are met when firing an employee is required and thereby attempting to avoid liability lawsuits in which the county commission gets stuck paying the bill.

2. CCAWV will support passage of a bill to add a process fee to the bonding process in both circuit court and magistrate court of $50.00 collected at the time of bonding to be used to offset county regional jail costs.

3. CCAWV voted to support the efforts of Mercer County to pass legislation to allow for permissive authority, county by county to put the issue of a “meal tax” before the county voters for passage.

4. The board also considered and opposed passage of a bill introduced this week that would create a state level “county compensation commission” that would make recommendations to the legislature regarding compensation increases for county officials. (SB 367) Instead we will continue to seek passage of the CCA proposed on-going mechanism to allow county commissions to review county official salaries every two years and make recommendation, as approved by the membership at our August annual meeting.