The Grayson County Criminal District Attorney's office in Sherman has a $275,000 state grant to put toward its payroll, under a signed agreement going before county commissioners on Tuesday.
The money comes from the Texas Comptroller's Rural Prosecutor's Office Salary Assistance Program, which the 88th Legislature created through Senate Bill 22 to help prosecutors' offices in rural counties. District Attorney John Kermit Hill asked the Commissioners Court to receive the signed agreement into its minutes at its 10 a.m. meeting on Nov. 10.
It is a consent item, so it is expected to pass with other routine business in a single vote.
The agreement lists only two ways the office may spend the money. It can raise the salaries of assistant prosecutors, investigators and victim assistance coordinators, or it can hire additional staff. Overtime, longevity pay and cashed-out comp time do not count, and the county cannot charge administrative or indirect costs to the grant. Contract labor is also excluded, though the office may hire temporary employees.
Raises are measured against what each employee was paid at the close of the fiscal year before the office first received money from the program, and a new position counts only if it did not exist at that point.
The comptroller pays the grant in advance. The agreement runs through Sept. 30, 2027. Any unspent money must be returned, and the office has 30 days after the agreement ends to file a report certifying how the funds were used.
