Candidate Questions County Campaigning Policy

Republican County Attorney candidate Mark Elvig questioned the Fayette County Commissioners Court last week about a policy regarding County employees who run for office.

Elvig spoke during the public comment period of the Commissioners Court meeting last Thursday, Jan. 11. His opponent in the Republican Primary, James Herbrich, works for Fayette County as an assistant county attorney.

“On Dec. 22, 2022, this court unanimously approved four changes to the Fayette County Personnel Policy, including one that exempt employees have to track their time when running for office,” Elvig said at the meeting. “That was approved. It’s in the minutes.”

Commissioners made that change in 2022 following a particularly contentious primary runoff in the County Judge race between Dan Mueller and Craig Moreau. At the time, Moreau worked for the County as Emergency Management Coordinator, and Mueller served as the Pct. 4 Justice of the Peace. The policy was intended to provide transparency to the public when a County employee runs for office. By tracking their time, such an employee should be able to show that they are not campaigning while on the clock for the County.

However, Elvig said the policy was never implemented. Elvig said he inquired about the policy and received the following response from the County: “No language for the proposed amendment was approved or provided to the court,” he said, quoting the response. “No proposed language was provided to the County Attorney’s office for legal review.”

During the Dec. 22, 2022 meeting, the Commissioners instructed staff to prepare the language for the policy. At the time, Court Administrator Cassie Austin told the Commissioners that the official language for the policy would be presented to them at a future meeting for final approval. But that never happened.

Elvig wanted to know if or when the County intends implement the policy. The Commissioners did not respond since the subject was not part of last Thursday’s meeting agenda.

Assistant County Attorney Blake Watson told the Record after the meeting last week that his office never received any policy language for legal review.

The Record also interviewed Herbrich last Friday, and he said such a policy could be deemed unconstitutional if it required a County employee to account for activities during

their personal time away from work.

“As an exempt employee, I’m not required to be at the office eight to five,” Herbrich said. “But I’ve always been at the office eight to five. In fact, I put in a lot more hours than that.”

Nevertheless, Herbrich said he has chosen to use earned vacation whenever he spends time on campaign activities during normal business hours, even though he is not required to do so.

“If you look at my time cards, you’ll see that I have been campaigning during the week, but there’s vacation accounted for that,” he said. “If I spend 30 or 40 minutes on my campaign, I take an hour of vacation because I want to be above board.”

Herbrich said anyone with questions about his time on the campaign trail may inspect his time cards, and he said Elvig has seen copies of them.