Can a North Carolina county social services board adopt its own grievance procedure and appoint itself as the appeal body for personnel decisions made by the county social services director?
Plain-English summary
W. A. Holland, Jr., counsel for the Johnston County Department of Social Services, asked the AG whether the county DSS board could appoint itself as a grievance-appeal panel to hear and rule on employee grievances. The board wanted to adopt its own procedures for that purpose, and the county commissioners had not authorized the activity.
The 1983 AG answered no. The reasoning rested on two interlocking statutory schemes.
First, the State Personnel Act (Chapter 126) covers local social services employees by default. G.S. 126-5(a) extends the chapter to "employees of local social services departments . . . which receive federal grant-in-aid funds." That means a county DSS employee is part of the state personnel system unless something else displaces it.
Second, the displacement mechanism is narrow. G.S. 126-1 allows local boards to operate local personnel systems only "to the extent that local governing boards are authorized by the State" to do so. G.S. 126-11 specifies that the substitute system must be established by the "board of county commissioners" and must be found by the State Personnel Commission to be "substantially equivalent" to the state system. G.S. 126-9(a) similarly speaks of the "board of county commissioners" adopting rules that supersede state rules upon filing with the State Personnel Director. The board of county commissioners is the only county-level body that may substitute a local system.
Third, the social services statutes (Chapter 108A) confer the day-to-day personnel authority on the county director, not on the social services board. G.S. 108A-14 makes the county DSS director responsible for appointing necessary personnel "in accordance with the merit system rules of the State Personnel Commission." G.S. 108A-9(1) limits the DSS board's personnel role to appointing the director itself.
Putting the three together, the county DSS board cannot vault itself into a grievance-appeal role. To do so would supplant the State Personnel Commission's grievance procedure (G.S. 126-11) and infringe on the director's appointment authority (G.S. 108A-14). The proper grievance path runs through the state personnel framework, not through the DSS board.
Currency note
This opinion was issued in 1983. Subsequent statutory amendments, court decisions, or later AG opinions may have changed the analysis. Treat this page as historical context, not current legal advice. Verify current law before relying on any specific rule, deadline, or remedy mentioned here. Chapter 126 has been amended many times since 1983, including reorganization of the State Personnel Commission as the State Human Resources Commission. The fundamental architecture (a default state system, narrow county-substitution authority lodged in the board of commissioners, and a director-centered DSS personnel structure under Chapter 108A) has been preserved in broad strokes, but the specific section numbers and procedures should be verified against the current statutes.
Historical context: what the AG concluded
The 1983 opinion did three pieces of legal work worth flagging.
It read Chapter 126's coverage of DSS employees as default and broad. The statutory text is general: local social services department employees receiving federal grant-in-aid funds are within the state personnel system. The opinion takes that text at face value and does not search for implicit DSS-specific carve-outs.
It identified the board of county commissioners as the only proper substitute-system authority. Both G.S. 126-1 (the general authorization clause) and G.S. 126-11 (the substantial-equivalence mechanism) specifically name the "board of county commissioners." That naming was decisive. The DSS board was not a stand-in for the board of commissioners; only the commissioners could trigger a substitute system.
It read the social services statute as silent on the question. G.S. 108A-9 lists the DSS board's powers; grievance-appeal authority is not on that list. The opinion treats statutory silence on this point as exclusion, because the operative personnel authority is conferred elsewhere (on the director by G.S. 108A-14, and on the state system by Chapter 126).
The opinion's bottom line is that the DSS board cannot create personnel authority for itself by simply adopting procedures. The authority must come from the statute or from a substitute system properly adopted by the board of county commissioners.
Background and statutory framework
The State Personnel Act, Chapter 126, set up a state-administered personnel system for most state employees and for certain categories of local employees, including those at local social services departments receiving federal funds. The chapter's coverage clause (G.S. 126-5(a)) is sweeping. The substitution mechanism (G.S. 126-11) requires the board of county commissioners to establish a substitute personnel system covering all county employees subject to its jurisdiction, and requires the State Personnel Commission to make a periodic substantial-equivalence finding. G.S. 126-9(a) is the parallel for rules on leave, hours, holidays, and pay administration.
Chapter 108A is the social services chapter. G.S. 108A-9(1) gives the DSS board the power to appoint the county director, but does not extend the board's personnel role beyond that appointment. G.S. 108A-14 puts the day-to-day personnel authority on the director, who must operate within the State Personnel Commission's merit-system rules.
The combination produces a clean division. The board of county commissioners can opt the whole county out of the state personnel system into a substantially equivalent local system. The DSS director runs day-to-day personnel within whichever system applies. The DSS board's personnel role is limited to picking the director. There is no statutory slot for the DSS board as a grievance-appeal body.
Common questions
Where does a county DSS employee actually take a grievance?
Under the 1983 framework, the grievance procedure followed the State Personnel Commission's rules unless the county commissioners had adopted a substantially equivalent local system. The opinion does not lay out the specific steps; it points the reader to the State Personnel Commission as the rule source.
Can the county commissioners delegate substitution authority to the DSS board?
The 1983 opinion does not directly answer this, but it treats the statutory naming of "the board of county commissioners" as the controlling text. The substitute personnel system must be established and maintained by the commissioners. A delegation to the DSS board would likely fail because the statute names the commissioners as the originating authority.
Does the DSS board have any personnel role beyond appointing the director?
Under G.S. 108A-9(1) as it read in 1983, the DSS board's statutory personnel role was the appointment of the county director. Beyond that, the personnel authority belonged to the director (G.S. 108A-14) and the State Personnel Commission (Chapter 126).
What happens to an appeal procedure the DSS board adopts anyway?
The 1983 opinion treats such a procedure as ultra vires. It would not bind the director (whose appointment authority comes from G.S. 108A-14), would not bind the State Personnel Commission (whose rules apply by default), and would not give the employee any enforceable right of appeal that does not already exist under state law.
Does this rule apply to DSS departments that do not receive federal grant-in-aid funds?
The opening clause of G.S. 126-5(a) makes federal grant-in-aid funding the trigger for coverage of local social services employees under Chapter 126. A DSS department that receives no federal funds might fall outside this default coverage, but the 1983 opinion does not analyze that scenario. Modern county DSS operations are almost uniformly federally funded, so the carve-out has limited practical scope.
Source
- Landing page: https://ncdoj.gov/opinions/county-social-services-boards-authority-in-personnel-matters/
Citations
- N.C.G.S. § 126-1
- N.C.G.S. § 126-5(a)
- N.C.G.S. § 126-9(a)
- N.C.G.S. § 126-11
- N.C.G.S. § 108A-9(1)
- N.C.G.S. § 108A-14
Original opinion text
Requested By: W. A. Holland, Jr., Esquire, Counsel for the Johnston County Department of Social Services
Question: May a county board of social services appoint itself as an appeal body to hear and rule upon employee grievances, where this duty has not been authorized by the board of county commissioners?
Conclusion: No.
The facts underlying this question are as follows. The county social services board wishes to hear appeals from personnel decisions made by the county social services director. The board proposes to adopt procedures for that purpose. The local board of county commissioners has not authorized such an activity by the social services board.
The General Statutes show that the county board of social services cannot undertake this responsibility. First, as a general rule, local social services employees are part of the state personnel system.
"The provisions of this Chapter [126] shall apply to all State employees not herein exempt, and to employees of local social services departments . . . which receive federal grant-in-aid funds. . . ."
G.S. 126-5(a).
However, local officials may establish local rules and local personnel systems, "to the extent that local governing boards are authorized by the State" to do so. G.S. 126-1.
In accordance with the provisions just quoted, G.S. 126-11 reads as follows:
"The board of county commissioners of any county which shall establish and maintain a personnel system for all employees of the county subject to its jurisdiction, which system is found from time to time by the State Personnel Commission to be substantially equivalent to the system established under Article 1 of his Chapter for employees of local welfare departments, public health departments, and mental health clinics, may include employees of these local agencies within the terms of such systems. Employees covered by that shall be exempt from the provisions of Article 1 of this Chapter."
To that end, the General Statutes say,
"When a board of county commissioners adopt rules and regulations governing annual leave, sick leave, hours of work, holidays and the administration of the pay plan for county employees generally and the county rules and regulations are filed with the State Personnel Director, the county rules will supercede the rules adopted by the State Personnel Commission as to the county employees otherwise subject to this Chapter."
G.S. 126-9(a).
Summing up these statutes, we see that social services employees are subject to the provisions of the State personnel plan unless the board of county commissioners makes changes.
Turning to the social services statutes, we find that the county director of social services has the duty "to appoint necessary personnel of the county department of social services in accordance with the merit system rules of the State Personnel Commission." G.S. 108A-14. The county board of social services has no statutory authority in personnel matters except to appoint the county director in accordance with the State merit system. G.S. 108A-9(1)
Therefore, in light of these statutes, the social services board cannot confer upon itself the authority which the Johnston County Board wishes to exercise. To do so would violate G.S. 108A-14. Also, it would supplant the authority vested in the county commissioners by G.S. 126-11.
For the foregoing reasons, we believe that the General Statutes prevent the Johnston County Board of Social Services from constituting itself as a review panel to review personnel decisions made by the local county director of social services.
RUFUS L. EDMISTEN
Attorney General
Steven Mansfield Shaber
Assistant Attorney General