County government officials testified in Washington last week on the ways that a new Department of Labor regulation will hurt their ability to provide services.
As the National Association of Counties reports, Jerrie Tipton, chair of the Mineral County, Nevada Board of Commissioners, testified June 23 before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Small Business on the constraints created for counties by the Department of Labor’s new rule on overtime pay. The rule, which doubles the threshold under which white- collar employees are eligible for overtime pay to $47,476, will hurt Mineral County’s ability to budget and provide services to its residents, Tipton said.
“The new rule would make 13 to 17 of our 102 full-time county employees eligible for overtime pay — an additional cost of up to $45,000 a year,” Tipton said. “This might not seem like a lot, but it poses quite a financial challenge since counties are limited in our ability to generate local revenue.”
Tipton also emphasized that counties are major public sector employers whose workforce provides essential services to more than 300 million residents and should be partners with the federal government in creating labor policy that makes sense, NACo reports.
For more information see the following resources from the National Association of Counties, and our previous post on Conduit Street, NACo Concerned About County Impact of New Federal Overtime Rule and 4.2 Million More Workers Eligible for Overtime Under New Federal Rule.
