The Savannah morning news., 1901-08-09
FIXED IN THEIR MINDS.
Commissioners VIII Pay Officers
Only One Per Diem n Day.


Only One Per Diem n Day.
There will be no payment of two per
diems for any one days service to
the officers of the courts of Chatham
county in the future. The county
commissioners have decided that such
payments are illegual and they are not
going to make them any more.
Before the commissioners filed out
into the long room of their offices at
the Court House yesterday afternoon.
for the purpose of taking up and dis
posing formally of the business before
the board, they had a caucus, lasting
for nearly two hours.
At this caucus the matter of the
payment of two per diems to the court
officers was discussed at length and
the report of the county attorney was
read. This report was to the effect
that the day spoken of in the act pro-
viding for the compensation of officers
was the full day of twenty-four hours
and not more than one per diem could
be paid legally for any services per-
formed within such a period.
There was no action of any sort
taken upon the report nor was the
question preached at all in open meet
ing 1t was just determined that there
would be no more bills approved which
charged more than one per diem for
any one days service. The commits
sioners have reached the conclusion
that under the law this is the only
course they can legally pursue and
they will follow the strict letter of
the law.
Commissioner Dale was in error
when he stated to the Morning News
that the practice of paying two per
diems, when cases continued on trial or
juries were locked up and trying to
agree on a verdict until after 9 o'clock,
extended to the jurors. This has never
been done, the court officers, the sher-
iff and his deputies and baliffs. being
the only ones TO whom the additional
compensation has been paid.
The officers were sore yesterday at
the turn affairs had taken, and they
had little hesitancy of expressing their
opinion on the subject.
1.-THE per diem is only 50 a day." said
one of them, land that looks little
enough, even when 1t is occasionally
very occasionally, increased by the
payment of an additional per diem,
when we are kept on duty until after 8
o'clock at night. The fact of the mat
ter is that we are constantly perform
ing duties at night, in summoning wit
nesses to attend the sessions of the
court, for which we receive no COM
pensation whatever in addition to the
regular per diem, except in the cases
where the court is in session later than
8 o'clock.
1.-The total amount of the extra COM
pensation of this kind paid us during
the year is very small, and 1t seems
to me that the action of the County
tee in refusing If fS SINAI III
too. The practice has been followed
for thirty years, under the same law
which now governs the case, without
any objection made until the present.
If such a course of conduct is kept up
the result will be that the men who
are now deputies and bailiffs Will be
driven out of the business and the
sheriff forced to employ others. whose
character and services will be very
much less satisfactory to the public"
To these arguments the commission
ers have only one answer to make.
That is that they are public officers
and the money they handle public
money and they can only handle it in
accordance with law. They cannot,
under their oaths, countenance pay
ments for which the law makes no
provision and they can only pay to the
court officers the per diem which the
law allows. 1t is not with them a
question of what they would like to
do, but what, on their oaths, they have
the power to do. If they have permit
ted unauthorized expenditures in the
past, it has been because they were ig-
norant of the exact law on the subject;
now that they have been apprised of
just what the law is and been told that
1t is so plain that it's meaning cannot
be escaped, they have no longer any
excuse for refusing to obey it or to
abide by its instructions for the dis
charge of their duties.