Three county employees fired after failing drug tests

Posted 2/25/21

Three employees in the Park County government’s Buildings and Grounds Department were recently fired after they failed drug and alcohol tests.  

With the county being a drug-free …

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Three county employees fired after failing drug tests

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Three employees in the Park County government’s Buildings and Grounds Department were recently fired after they failed drug and alcohol tests. 

With the county being a drug-free workplace, the violations were grounds for termination, department Superintendent Mike Garza told county commissioners on Feb. 9. All three employees worked in Cody, he said.

The Buildings and Grounds Department — which is generally made up of maintenance technicians and custodians — began a drug testing program last year to help get the county a 10% discount on its workers’ compensation insurance premiums. Generally, only a fraction of the department’s employees are tested at a given time, Garza said, but “we had to do a baseline.” As a result, all 21 buildings and grounds employees were tested at the same time, said Garza, who “was a bit surprised” to have three workers test positive for drugs or alcohol.

Employees in the county’s road and bridge and landfill divisions have long undergone drug testing, mainly due to requirements tied to commercial driver’s licenses. Currently, there are 27 employees in those departments who are subject to random testing, said Park County Engineer Brian Edwards. He said that, in his six years with the county, the road and bridge and landfill departments “haven’t had a single issue” of failed tests.

To qualify for the workers’ compensation discount, a certain percentage of an employer’s workers must be drug tested and the county needed the custodians and maintenance technicians to hit that mark, Garza said.

Between the positive drug tests and another, unrelated termination, buildings and grounds recently lost four full-time employees, but Garza plans to only fill three of the posts for the time being; he said he’s currently exploring whether the fourth position can be filled by a couple of seasonal staffers.

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