The former superintendent of the Lawrence County Board of Mental Retardation/Developmental Disabilities is suing the MR/DD board.

In his lawsuit,

Jimmie Thacker seeks $42,541.03 from the board in unused sick days and vacation time for which he said he was not paid. Thacker retired as superintendent in September 2002 after 26 years in that position.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday with the Lawrence County Clerk of Courts Office.

In his suit, Thacker alleged that he was entitled to be paid upon his retirement for 100 percent of 2,551.31 unused sick hours he had accumulated.

According to the lawsuit,"The Lawrence County MR/DD has paid plaintiff the amount of $68,420.08 for unused sick leave of which 1,369.7 hours were paid at 100 percent in accordance with the board policy and plaintiff's contract for a total of $58,766.68. However, the plaintiff instead of being paid for the remaining 1,181.61 hours at 100 percent, the board paid the plaintiff 25 percent of the 959.8 hours in the amount of $9,653.40 in breach of the plaintiff's employment contract."

The lawsuit also alleges that Thacker had accumulated 684.2 hours of vacation time, and should have been paid $29,352.18 for those days. He was instead paid $27,842.27, a difference of $1,509.91.

MR/DD Board President Oran Clouse said he had not seen the lawsuit yet, but had heard that Thacker would file one against the board.

"I feel like we paid him what we owed him," Clouse said. "If it's determined that we should pay him (the additional money) then we'll go ahead and do it. I felt like we did the right thing."

Clouse said he knew when Thacker left that Thacker and the board did not agree on the amount of money he should be paid for unused sick days, but he was not aware of a discrepancy over vacation days.

"I'm sorry this has happened," Clouse said.