Christmas will come a little early this year for 577 Dougherty County employees, and it’s the County Commission that will serve as their not-so-secret Santa.

The commission will vote at its business meeting next week on a proposal to make a $500 lump-sum distribution to current full-time employees who were on the county payroll as of June 30. The bonus checks would go out separately from employees’ regular paychecks on Dec. 6.

The recommendation for the employee bonuses came from the commission’s Finance Committee.

“We’ve had a positive impact on our reserve funds for the last three years, and we felt our employees deserved some good financial news,” Finance Committee Chairman Lamar Hudgins said after Monday’s meeting. “I can’t imagine there would be any complaints (from the community). I didn’t hear any complaints from our employees when they were hit with a pay cut a couple of years ago.

“When the Budget Committee made a recommendation on the full budget, we said we’d see how things were tracking (on tax collections) before making a decision (on possible bonuses). The county administrator has done that, and we’re recommending a lump-sum disbursement to all employees. And, I want to stress, no county commissioner is included in this.”

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