HUNTINGDON, Tenn. — Andy Dickson was both honored and disappointed Monday night at his last commission meeting as Sheriff of Carroll County.
Dickson was among a group of elected officials recognized for their service to the county, receiving a plaque from Mayor Joseph Butler honoring his 36 years with the Sheriff’s Office.
Later, commissioners had voted unanimously to let Dickson retain his service weapon upon retirement.
But by the meeting’s end, they had voted down Resolution 8-08-2026, a hazardous duty supplemental retirement benefit for public safety officers that Dickson had pushed for months.
“I wasn’t really pleased with it, but there’s nothing I can do,” Dickson said afterward.
The Retirement Benefit
The resolution would have established a supplemental pension benefit for eligible police officers, firefighters, and correctional officers under a 2024 state law.
It required the county to make $328,774 lump-sum payment to the state retirement system.
Dickson said the program was created to address hazards that police departments throughout the state faced during COVID.
“Everybody else shut down and went home [during COVID]. They didn’t face head-on what we were dealing with. We couldn’t shut down. We had a jail we had to operate,” Dickson said. “My jail administrator died from COVID that he contracted.”
He added a more recent example of a former employee who suffered a fatal heart attack that very morning while mowing his yard.
“Those years working in the jail and the stress, did they take years off his life,” Dickson wondered. “He would have been eligible to receive money from this.”
Prior to the Resolution
The resolution had drawn opposition outside the commission.
During the Citizens Forum, Jan Ostiguy argued the benefit was redundant.
“I maintain that this is an example of government duplicating programs and costing citizens money,” Ostiguy said.
She added that the county already pays roughly $180,000 a year into a workers’ compensation pool covering firefighters and police officers.
“I just don’t understand why we have to spend over $300,000 to establish benefits that are readily available for our officers,” she said. “I humbly ask you to vote no on this.”
Commissioner Walter Smothers argued the county should support it as a way to retain experienced officers.
Commissioner Cyril Ostiguy added his own argument.
“I enlisted into the military 55 years ago. I was a combat medic,” he said. “I got no reward when I got out. I don’t think it is necessary for someone to spend 20 years in a job to get a large sum of money because of the job that they did, when they knew it was dangerous when they filled out that piece of paper.”
A Motion Causes Confusion
When the resolution reached the floor, Commissioner Barry Mac Murphy made an additional motion of his own.
“We’ve just elected a new sheriff that’s coming in who might want to weigh in on this,” Murphy said. “I’m going to make a motion that we postpone this until the next meeting.”
Dickson gestured to Sheriff-elect Eric Sawyers, who was also in attendance.
“The new Sheriff is sitting right here. You can ask him anything you want to about it.” Dickson said.
Murphy’s call to postpone caused confusion among commissioners, making them refer to their Roberts Rules of Order books to see if it was proper procedure.
Not everyone agreed that postponing was the answer.
“I’m sick of hearing about it,” said Commissioner Darrell Ridgely. “If you want to vote for it, vote for it. If you want to vote against it, vote against it. We are all adults in this room, and it ain’t up to everybody else to make a decision for us… I think we owe it to the man. He’s been sheriff for how many years?”
Commissioner John Austin agreed.
“That’s what we are duly elected to do. That’s our job in this county,” Austin said. “For us to postpone it and push it off to new commissioners next month is absurd to me.”
Committee Concerns
Commissioner Dan Willman argued that the resolution hadn’t gone through the proper committee process.
“It was not brought up in the fire committee, which it should need to go through both [Law Enforcement and Fire Committees],” Willman said. “If it’s going to affect both firemen and the police, and it’s going to affect their budgets, it needs to be looked at.”
Dickson responded that he had asked about that very question earlier in the process.
“When it was tabled in law enforcement committee, I asked then if it come out of finance, do I need to come back to the law enforcement committee? And the answer was no,” Dickson said.
Willman disagreed, maintaining that it should’ve gone through both committees.
Back to the Vote
The Commission finally decided that Murphy’s motion to postpone was valid and needed to be addressed before taking up the resolution.
It failed with 16 Commissioners voting against.
Commissioners then voted on the original resolution.
It failed as well, with 14 ‘no’ votes, 5 ‘yes’ votes, and 2 pass.
Commissioners Smothers, Murphy, Jimmy Halford, Lana Suite, and Randy Long voted ‘yes’ and Commissioners Daniel Thomas and Joey Darnall ‘passed’ on voting.
Discussions Afterwards
After the meeting, Murphy reflected on his motion to postpone the vote.
He said his intent was to buy incoming Sheriff Sawyers a seat at the table, not to kill the resolution.
“I respect our sheriff. I like Andy. He’s always been professional, well known, well respected,” Murphy said. “I wanted to give Andy a little breathing room. The new sheriff said he might want input into this. You want happy employees. You want people to have a career.”
Sawyers, who takes office September 1, said he saw both sides of the issue.
“I think it’s a good thing for the [employees]. It’s a good benefit, but it’s also a pretty good cost too,” he explained.
Sawyers added that he couldn’t give a definite answer before taking office and looking at the numbers first.
For Dickson, the outcome stung regardless of the reasoning behind it.
“I just feel like it’s a slap in the face to all the employees that are out there on the front line every day,” he said. “The only thing I asked for all along was to get it before the committee and let them vote it up or down. I’m proud that they did at least vote.”
