Limestone County’s five commissioners would be eligible to receive a $500 bonus after unanimously approving the measure this week, but not all were sure they would take the money.

On Monday, the commission voted to take a $142,161 rebate it received from Remington in Huntsville and give it to all 284 county employees, which includes Limestone County commissioners and other elected officials. Remington issued rebates to entities that provided cash incentives after the firearms maker failed to meet hiring targets.

Citing a legal opinion by the county’s attorney, County Administrator Pam Ball said commissioners are entitled to receive the payment. However, there is no language in the state’s omnibus pay bill that would prohibit commissioners from declining the payment if they all unanimously chose to do so.

Ball said the bonuses, which are subject to tax withholdings, would be issued next Friday.

Commission Chairman Collin Daly said the one-time payments of $500 per employee were designed to boost morale because county employees had not received merit increases since 2016. A cost-of-living adjustment was suspended in 2016 but granted in 2017. COLAs were not given last year.

Also, employees previously received an annual $250 medical reimbursement plan, but that was cut last year.

Daly said he didn’t know he and his fellow commissioners would have been eligible to receive the bonus until after the commission had voted on it.

“I’m willing to give mine away because I didn’t want it to begin with,” he said. “I wanted to be able to give a merit increase, but it would have cost a half-million dollars and we just couldn’t do that.”

District 1 Commissioner Daryl Sammet said he didn’t know he was eligible to receive the bonus and added he wasn’t interested in taking it, either.

“For morale purposes, I don’t have a problem with it, but it’s just a Band-Aid; it’s not a fix,” he said. “Hopefully, we can get some more revenue coming in off some other things we’re trying to work on, but we’ve got to get to the point where we can give raises.”

District 2 Commissioner Steve Turner said he didn’t care “either way” about the bonus. He voted in favor of the proposal because he felt it would be good for the employees.

“For two years, we’ve tightened our belts on everything we can tighten,” he said. “I didn’t think morale was bad to begin with, but it certainly helps when you can do something good for your employees when you’ve asked them to suck it up and do their jobs. … If I get it (the bonus), I get it, and if I don’t, I don’t. Five hundred dollars isn’t going to break me either way.”

Jason Black, Limestone’s District 3 commissioner, said he planned to take the bonus because he views himself as a county employee. He said if cost-of-living raises had been available, elected officials would have received those, too.

“I have to go out and work, even on the weekend. I wish we could have included the hours we were out (during the recent flooding event),” he said. “We’re not doing anything illegal (by taking the bonus). We checked all that out.”

District 4 Commissioner Ben Harrison said he would not take the bonus and instead asked for his to be transferred to his gas tax fund to be used on roads. If the county is unable to do that, he said, the money would go back into the general fund.

“I do not believe that it is right for politicians to vote themselves a raise. Of course, whenever we do the budget, if we vote for a cost-of-living raise, we do that,” he said. “We need another system for rating and evaluating politicians to see if they merit a pay raise.”