LaGRANGE – The Troup County Coroner went before the Board of Commissioners on Tuesday to request the funds necessary to hire on a second deputy coroner part-time for when he and his deputy are both at their full-time jobs.

Both the coroner and the deputy coroner are paid per call, so it is necessary for both to maintain separate employment. The Harris County Coroner’s office has supplied assistance when both were unavailable in the past.

“The second deputy is – salary-wise is no different (because) we are paid by call – (but) the training for the first year would be roughly $1,638 to get this person trained, but I’m also going to not be paying out $2,155 to the hospital anymore because they don’t do x-rays for us anymore,” said Coroner Jeff Cook. “… This would be to fill in when one of us couldn’t cover. Whoever we decide on would be a fully certified deputy coroner.”

According to Cook, there are steps that the Troup County Coroner takes on behalf of the county and the city of LaGrange that the borrowed employees from other counties do not, and because those steps are skipped when someone from another county fills in, that the local office has to go behind them on those cases to complete the necessary steps.

The coroner also requested a web-based software to create a database to log cases into. The office still uses a paper system, which makes it difficult to quickly search for case details and more time consuming to fill out the necessary forms than it would be to fill out the same forms digitally. The software would cost $1,975, plus an annual maintenance fee of $600.

Commissioner Ellis Cadenhead questioned if a less expensive software could accomplish the same task, but the coroner indicated that he did not believe it would.

The Troup County Board of Commissioners plans to review all funding requests at its meeting on May 4 at p.m. at 100 Ridley Ave when they also plan to discuss how to fund a recommended employee pay increase.

 

Reach Alicia B. Hill at alicia.hill@lagrangenews.com or at 706-884-7311, Ext. 2154.