It’s a good thing the Butler County commissioners backed away from their intention to eliminate compensatory time off for employees working overtime.

On the face of it, it seems counterintuitive to remove an option from department heads striving to make best use of limited staff hours. The only possible exception would be if employees have learned how to use the particular option to game the system to their advantage, such as working through lunch breaks Monday through Thursday and taking off all of Friday. Not that anybody does that.

There’s also a good chance any change might be challenged as a violation of state law. At the least, the provisions should be spelled out in specific detail in collective bargaining agreements with the county’s labor unions.

On Monday, Commissioner Dale Pinkerton proposed an end to the awarding of compensatory time off, that overtime pay would be necessary to keep county departments staffed, and that employees need extra money instead of time off.

But on Wednesday, Pinkerton withdrew the motion, saying the current policy will remain for now. In the meantime, the commissioners will meet with department heads individually to determine what their needs are for staffing, overtime and comp time.

There are state labor laws and regulations that restrict comp time.

According to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and Pennsylvania state labor law, employers generally can’t award comp time to an employee who works overtime. Employees are entitled to overtime pay, equal to one-and-a-half times the employee’s regular hourly rate, for all hours worked in excess of 40 hours in one week.

But there are notable exceptions.

In some cases, state and county government workers covered by a union contract may be eligible for comp time. Hourly employees can be awarded 1.5 hours of comp time for every hour of overtime they work, but only up to 240 comp time hours per year; non-hourly employees can be awarded 1 hour of comp time for every hour of overtime worked, with no total hours limit.

The rules are different for the private sector, where comp time must be taken in the same pay period that the employee earns the overtime.

Also in the private sector, overtime hours cannot be “banked” for future consideration, either as accrued overtime pay or comp time. Government employees, if their contract allows them, can cash in their banked OT hours upon retirement and earn a double benefit, since the amount of their Social Security retirement benefit is calculated, in part, on their three years of highest income. That could be the reason county employees still have 2,801 of uncompensated overtime hours from 2014, equating to about $64,000 in overtime wages.

Credit Commissioner Jim Eckstein for opposing the idea when it was proposed Monday. Eckstein suggested leaving the choice between overtime pay and comp time up to department heads and their employees.