Seven Otoe County road workers won a temporary reprieve Friday from layoffs slated to take effect on Labor Day. The Otoe County Board voted to delay a decision until at least September 9th.

The only item on the agenda was the future of the seven employees to be laid off Monday due to budget cuts. A calmer, overflow crowd came to hear what the board would decide this time.

A motion to delay the layoffs was approved unanimously. “This does not mean that the employees are back on the job permanently,” said board chairman Dale Haverty.

“We still have the same budget problem worse than we had before because we now have to pay the same employees for another three weeks.”

Before the next board meeting, the workers' union will try to convince a majority of board members to trim the budget elsewhere without cutting jobs.

“We’ve had a lot of discussions, a lot of heated arguments among the taxpayers, citizens of Otoe County and this heals it for right now,” said board member Nicki Kreifels.

“It’s gonna be nice to hold onto our insurance and our jobs for a little while longer anyway,” said worker Rick Hansen.

“Three weeks helps a lot, but I think they have the money to keep us on full time,” said worker Fred Phillips.

“It’s just three more weeks of work at least, but I expect at the next meeting to get a two-week notice again,” said worker Lou Wurtele.

“I hope they do realize they do have money in the budget. It gives some kind of hope that maybe they’ll come around and stop trying to lay us off,” said worker Matt Watkins.

The county board will meet again September 9th. At that time they could vote again to cut the seven jobs with two weeks notice.

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning said Thursday the county board's closed session in which they considered the layoffs violated the Open Meetings Act.

Chief Deputy Attorney General David Cookson said there was no proper reason for the board to have gone into closed session on August 12th under the circumstances. The board did not follow proper procedures in so doing.

State officials do no believe the case merits any legal action.