News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The Putnam County Commission has approved a resolution establishing the county as a drug-free workplace.
County Attorney Jeff Jones said stringent training requirements kept the county from seeking certified drug-free workplace status for several years.
“With all the burdens of training requirements that were in place prior to May of 2018, we just felt like it wasn’t worth doing,” Jones said. “Now, they (state lawmakers) have simplified the process for certification where you only have to train them one time. It just makes sense to go ahead and do this now.”
Counties with drug-free workplace certification receive a 5-percent reduction to their workers compensation premiums. Jones said Putnam County wouldn’t have benefited from that because of its self-insurance plan.
“The 5-percent decrease in your workers comp premiums was not really going to make that big of a difference,” Jones said. “Secondly, the county does a really good job of managing its workers comp claims. So the number of workers comp claims is managed and the number of workers comp claims that are attributable to some sort of intoxicant are even smaller.”
Mayor Randy Porter said the county has met most of the certification requirements for several years. He said the county decided to file for state certification after lawmakers amended the Drug-Free Workplace Act last year.
