Sheriff Takes Issue with County’s New MDI Overtime Pay Policy

April 30, 2025
By: Dwayne Page

A new policy adopted by the county commission Monday night regarding overtime pay for medical death investigators from the ambulance service isn’t setting well with Sheriff Patrick Ray.

A special called meeting of the county commission has been set for Monday, May 5 at 6 p.m. in the lower courtroom of the courthouse to revisit the medical examiner policy, specifically the compensation of employees and anything else pertaining to the medical examiner’s office.

Under the policy as proposed last Thursday night, April 24 during a county commission workshop, medical death investigators were to be paid fours (overtime per call) at an hourly rate based off their ambulance service salary. But during the regular monthly meeting Monday night, April 28 the proposed policy, as adopted by the county commission was changed from four hours to eight hours (overtime) that medical death investigators are to be paid.

County Mayor Matt Adcock gave an explanation prior to the vote Monday night.

“After doing a little bit more research we looked up the average salary for an MDI which is about $15 an hour so they were not making anywhere close to the $100 (per call) they were making before, so we took that average salary and multiplied it by eight. Because of it being an hourly salary its going to be taxed so they are going to have that (pay) check taxed, so it won’t be like the 1099 they got before. That is something that has been asked to be done,” said County Mayor Adcock.

The problem is, according to Sheriff Ray, the policy doesn’t provide a level playing field between the on-call MDIs and his own on call employees who often have to spend a much longer period of time at a scene and are not guaranteed eight hours of overtime.

According to Sheriff Ray, the MDI is on the scene to view the body and determine if the death is a natural death, suicide, or murder. After that, the MDI can release the body to law enforcement to complete the scene work. The MDI will also complete the paperwork to send into the state medical examiner.

“I used to be an MDI back when Dr. JC Wall was the medical examiner,” said Sheriff Ray. “ That was before you had to have a doctor, registered nurse, EMT, paramedic, or whoever you have to have now to do it. Back then there were no computers to send anything from. You had to do your paperwork by writing it down and faxing it in and there is no way it took four hours to do any of that. There might be a time where the medical examiner now might have to come and wait a few minutes to do something but all they are there for is the body. Once they release the body they can go do whatever they want. You (county commission) paid to train every EMS worker that is out there to be the MDI on the ambulance. They take the same information on their run sheets that goes to the state medical examiner. Other than putting it in a computer when they get back (from a scene) you can figure out how long that is. The county mayor can tell you how many pages that is to go out. What two pages? Its question and answer. Every one of them is the same,” said Sheriff Ray.

During Tuesday night’s budget committee meeting, Sheriff Ray said the rate of overtime pay MDIs are to get under this new policy is much more than what was discussed at the meeting Monday night.

“You (county commission) passed Monday night what you thought was $15 per hour (MDI pay) but that is not true. That is the standard rate ($15 per hour) for the lowest employee there (EMS) but that is not overtime pay. Those eight hours will be overtime at $22.50 per hour. One of the EMS people who works there makes $28 an hour so that’s $42 (per hour) for eight hours,” said Sheriff Ray.

If this policy remains in place, Sheriff Ray said he will be asking the county commission to amend his budget to provide for eight hours of overtime to his on-call employees. In fact, since the new policy went into effect Monday night, Sheriff Ray said he has already implemented the policy for his department. Should the county commission rescind the new medical examiner policy regarding eight hours of overtime pay for MDIs, Sheriff Ray said he would rescind a similar policy for his department.

“At the last budget meeting we had, the budget committee had requested the MDIs to be paid a minimum of four hours overtime for their work. I spoke to all of you that if this happened, I would be requesting the same for all of my staff,” explained Sheriff Ray. “I have a detective, a court deputy, and a correctional officer on call 24 hours a day. Detectives may come in and work two hours and complete their task such as a home death or break in. Court deputies come in for inmate transports or mental patient transports and may complete their task in less than three hours. Correctional officers may have to come in and go to the hospital to sit with an inmate for two hours or our female correctional officers may have to come in and strip search a female for less than ten minutes. None of these employees who are on call is paid unless they are called into work. I think my employees off time and especially when they are on call and can’t leave the county is valuable time to them. I am the only county department that I know of that has to do this because we are understaffed”.

“Since you (county commission) have developed a pay plan and this plan passed at the county commission meeting Monday night with all voting “yes” for paying an on-call MDI eight hours overtime per call, I also started Monday night after the meeting the same plan to all of my on-call employees if they are called into work. If they are required to come into work, they will receive, at the minimum, eight hours of overtime pay,” said Sheriff Ray.

“If my overtime budget will not sustain the added expense of the overtime pay, I will be asking the commission for a budget amendment. Also, without knowing what these added expenses will cost in the next budget year, I would also ask you tonight to add extra monies to the overtime budget for all of the Sheriff’s Department and Jail employees overtime to fulfill your commitment of the MDI overtime allowance you gave them,” Sheriff Ray said.

In a prepared statement, Sheriff Ray further explained the duties of his employees and the MDI during a death investigation.

“Sheriff’s Department Detectives are paid when they respond to a death scene, from when they check in on the radio at their residence and they are paid until they arrive back at their residence. The detectives are responsible for the death scene. The MDI is responsible for the body”.

“If a death requires an autopsy, the MDI will contact a transport service for the body and notify the state medical examiner of what they have. Most of the time it is a local transport service”.

“If the death is believed to be of natural causes, the MDI will call for an ambulance if available and will set up a transport for the body to the emergency room or the MDI will call a local funeral home of the family’s choice and wait for the local funeral home to arrive. If the funeral home is out of town, the MDI should set up a transport with an ambulance to the hospital”.

“The sheriff’s department’s role is to investigate the death for foul play. Detectives will collect statements from witnesses, sketch a drawing of the crime scene by taking measurements of the position of the body where it lays”.

“Most all of the deaths that are believed to be suspicious in nature require a search warrant for the property or the residence. That is obtained by collecting evidence for probable cause, drafting a search warrant, having a criminal judge in Cookeville to sign the search warrant and then executing the search. All of the crime scene is photographed. Evidence is collected at the scene and brought to the sheriff’s department for safe keeping in the evidence room. If the victim has been transported to the hospital, the detective will respond to the hospital for pictures of the body. Detectives will also obtain arrest warrants from the warrant commissioner”.

“Here are the total scene hours (the most time-consuming cases) on four deaths this last year until today (April 29) for sheriff’s department detectives from checking enroute until completed.”

“Murder 6 hours”

“Murder 7.5 hours”

“Suicide 4.5 hours”

“Murder 4 hours and 40 minutes”

“As you can see, 7.5 hours was the longest time on the scene”

“Today (April 29) we had a home death. A deputy was dispatched at 9:41 a.m. and finished on the scene at 10:58 a.m. Total time 1 hour and 17 minutes. The death was not suspicious in nature”

“The MDI (who is supposed to be off shift at EMS) checked enroute at 9:46 a.m. in an ambulance causing the ambulance to be taken out of service”.

“The MDI completed time was 11:07 a.m. because the MDI transported the deceased to the funeral home (1 hour and 21 minutes). MDI will also have to send paperwork to the state”.

“As you can see most “at home deaths” have been natural causes and require minimum paperwork and officers are not on the scene very long”, said Sheriff Ray.

The budget committee Tuesday night temporarily tabled the proposed 2025-26 sheriff’s department and jail budgets along with other categories of the overall county general budget after imposing a temporary freeze on new spending until the jail construction issue is resolved. Exceptions were made for county employee step raises and state mandated pay increases for county public officials.

April 30, 2025
By: Dwayne Page

A temporary pause!

Except for county employee step increases and the state mandated pay raises for county officials, the budget committee Tuesday night voted to put a temporary “freeze” on new (extra) spending requests for the 2025-26 fiscal year pending a resolution of the jail construction issue.

Budget committee member Tony Luna made the motion.

“The elephant in the room is this jail project that we have going on. I would like to make a motion to freeze all pay raises and freeze the budget on everything except the step raises and the mandatory raises until we get past this jail construction (issue). Once we get past this jail construction (issue) then we will know what real money we have to spend. Until then I just don’t see how we can go any further,” said Commissioner Luna.

Budget committee member Tony (Cully) Culwell seconded the motion, and it was approved on a voice vote. Members of the budget committee in attendance were Sabrina Farler, Glynn Merriman, Mathias Anderson, Daniel Cripps, Tony Luna, and Tony (Cully) Culwell. Chairman Jeff Barnes was absent.

The budget committee also voted to keep part time pay for the 2025-26 fiscal year at the current level of $12.00 per hour across the board for all county part time personnel on a motion made by Culwell.

During the meeting, the budget committee began the process as scheduled of approving revenues and expenditures in several departments and categories of the overall budget including for the county commission, board of equalization, beer board, county mayor, county attorney, register of deeds, planning, county buildings, other general administration, property assessor, county trustee, county clerk, circuit court clerk, general session court, and drug court. In some cases, action was taken to temporarily table budget requests where department heads had asked for additional staff or pay raises for part time employees. Action will be taken on other department requests in later budget meetings

After the meeting, Commissioner Luna further explained his intent behind the motion on the freeze in proposed new spending. “The reason is we just don’t know what our budget is. I think everybody deserves a raise but how can we divvy out raises to everyone when we don’t even know what our budget is until we get the jail situation taken care of. I really wanted to get past the jail and hopefully get everybody what they are asking for. Everybody deserves what they are asking for but we’ll have to cut back some I’m sure but we have to get past this jail situation, so we know what’s left,” said Luna.

April 29, 2025
By: Dwayne Page

Back to the drawing board!

During Monday night’s regular monthly meeting, the county commission voted to ask Treanor Architects and Bell Construction to come up with cost estimates to build a new jail complex at the current site on the public square as well as on a generic green space location. The commission also wants to know what the jail footprint and cost would look like if the county were able to purchase the additional half acre lot adjoining the jail on the east side.

Fifth district commissioner and Jail Committee Chairman Larry Green made the initial motion which was approved on an 11-2 vote. Commissioners Tony Luna and Glen Merriman voted against it.

“I make a motion that Treanor Architects and Bell Construction be asked to evaluate our current jail to find out what can be done to upgrade to Tennessee Corrections Institute (TCI) standards, how many beds we would pick up, what the cost of the upgrade would be, and what we would build next to the current facility on the land we own and the cost to give us the number (beds) TCI is requiring. These would strictly be estimates. We will not know any final costs on anything we do until we actually have architect drawings, and we send them out for bids. These are only estimates to help us make the decisions we need to make. This is doing our due diligence about what the cost estimates would be for downtown versus someplace else,” said Green.

Third District Commissioner Tony Luna echoed a concern raised during the public comment period by Ken Fennell, a downtown business owner with over 30 years construction experience about potential remediation costs if asbestos or other environment issues were discovered at the current jail location.

“This cost would not include what the cost would be if they find asbestos or lead pipes. That would not be included in that estimate. I would love to get an idea of what it would cost if they do find asbestos to remediate that,” said Commissioner Luna.

After Commissioner Green’s motion was adopted, Second District Commissioner Sabrina Farler, in a subsequent motion, asked for cost estimates to include the half acre lot next to the existing jail if it could be purchased by the county. Her motion was adopted on an 11 to 2 vote. Commissioners Larry Green and Glynn Merriman voted against it.

Commissioner Farler then made yet another motion seeking estimates for development of a one level jail complex on a generic green space. This motion was adopted 12-1. Only Commissioner Glynn Merriman voted against it.

Before the votes, Sixth District Commissioner Andy Pack asked for more than just the one option. “I would like to see the cost at the current location versus the possibility of the cost at a different location. I would just like to see comparisons and not just a cost for downtown by itself,” he said.

“Are they going to give us an estimate on how many beds they can feasibly fit on the current property and the property next to it that has been offered for sale,” asked Seventh District Commissioner Mathias Anderson.

“Yes” answered Commissioner Green.

“I think probably at the same time they (architects) are doing this (evaluating existing jail location) they could also determine what it would cost to build on a green space. One thing that would affect it is how many beds are we going to build,” said Commissioner Green. “We have never reached a decision about how many beds we are going to build. TCI has never really come back and said you need x number of beds. We know what the (CTAS) study (for future growth) said last year which was for 270 beds. We said there was no way we could afford 270 beds. Then they said you need 240 beds right now. We said we can’t afford 240. We talked about 190 beds and that was a compromise. They (Treanor and Bell) did give us prices on 150, 190, and 220 beds. We have those estimates but that was all in three- and four-story buildings downtown. It would probably be a different cost estimate if you were going to take those down to one level and build it on a green space,” said Commissioner Green.

“We will need to assess what the impact of this is to the downtown area not only after its built but while it’s being done,” said First District Commissioner Tom Chandler.

“To Tom’s point, building downtown you can’t bring materials in and stage them like you can if you are building out someplace where you have plenty of land to build it on. In that case you would have to build and bring materials in as you needed them. You couldn’t stage anything in advance,” said Green.

Treanor Architects and Bell Construction, who plan to meet with county officials as early as next week, will develop a plan at no cost to the county according to Green.

“If we have this cost comparison done by early June then we could all get back together (county commission) and have a discussion about where we want to go with it,” said Commissioner Green.

Commissioner Greg Matthews said if the county does not move forward with a plan anytime soon the budget committee should consider asking that the county reduce the 51-cent property tax hike for debt service set last summer.

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