MIDDLEBURG — A number of courthouse employees have chronically been showing up late for their shifts, and Snyder County Commissioner Richard “Bud” Bickhart made it clear on Tuesday that he doesn’t approve.

“Certain employees come to work whenever they want to come to work,” he said. “They don’t care.”

Without giving names or departments, he said he has seen employees arrive a half hour after their shift starts, and then walk to the front of the building, where they can enter without swiping an employee card that can keep track of when they get there.

One particular employee, he said, “is not late a lot, but late every day.”

Bickhart said he saw at least three employees show up late on Tuesday, but as for the number who have been chronically tardy, “I think it’s more than three,” he told the rest of the board.

“If employees are hired to work 30, 35, or 40 hours a week, I think they ought to work that long,” he said.

And it’s obvious, he said, that as soon as 4 p.m. rolls around, the courthouse is basically empty, so “they don’t make up that time at the end of the day.”

If necessary, he said, time clocks could placed on each of the courthouse’s three floors, and cameras could be installed to monitor when employees arrive.

Commissioners expressed concern that department heads may also not be aware of their employees not arriving at their scheduled times, and often leave it up to employees to keep track of their own compensatory time.

“If you tell your employee, ‘You take care of your comp time,’ I don’t think that’s a good scenario,” Bickhart said.

One employee had acquired 128 hours of compensatory time, he said. “For her particular job, I don’t know how she has any.”

“I think it’s utterly ridiculous that we have compensatory time here,” said Commissioner Joe Kantz. However, he said if an employee does have to work extra one day, it would be in the best interest of the county to take off another day within the same time period.

And such time should be pre-approved by the department heads, the board agreed.

Kantz also expressed a desire to reduce the number of sick days — 12 — employees currently receive each year.

“I would like to know where anyone can go in the private sector and get the number of sick days we get here,” he said.