While a recent arbitration award has finalized the provisions of a contract between the county and its probation officers, the attorney hired to represent the county in the arbitration proceedings voted against it.

Christopher Gabriel said at the Wednesday county commissioners meeting that he voted no while the Butler County Probation Officers Association arbitrator and the neutral arbitrator hired to oversee the proceedings voted in favor of it.

Gabriel took to task legislation that he said allows the neutral arbitrator to rule not according to the evidence presented, but based on their concern with being selected again in the future.

He said that situation is causing governments to be shut down or significantly disrupted.

“Anyone who wants to know how governments get themselves into such calamities would find instruction in the job done here by the board of arbitrators,” Gabriel said. “Irresponsibility of this type is the stuff those later crises are made of.”

He said the county's probation officers, while valued and deserving, were already among the highest paid county employees in Pennsylvania before receiving raises in the award.

Read the full article in Thursday's Butler Eagle.