What a difference a payday makes. That’s what the county discovered almost eight years ago when it owed its employees an extra biweekly check. And the commissioners had to make sure that check was in the mail.

That’s why Lawrence County Commission is making sure it doesn’t get caught again.

Every 11th or 12th year employees who are paid biweekly get an extra paycheck.

That’s because dividing 365 days in a year, plus .25 for leap year, by 14 days doesn’t come out even.

That extra may look small, only .089, but it can grow and grow into a huge headache when payroll time comes due.

When it’s the employees for Lawrence County, it means an extra $220,000 the county has to come up for a biweekly payroll. That time will come again in 2015.

“We are creating a fund, kind of like a rainy day fund, and will put a lump sum into,” Commissioner Bill Pratt said. “Every business that is on a biweekly payroll will experience this.”

The plan is to deposit $5,000 a month for the first 11 months of each year for the next four years.

“That would make it $220,000,” Pratt said. “The key component of a fiscally conservative government is to have the initiative to be proactive. We don’t want to get to 2015 and have a budget crunch and people say how did that happen.”

That extra to go into the fund each month will come from the additional and unexpected amount from the county’s carryover into 2012.

“We were expecting $1.19 million in our surplus and ended up with $1.3 million,” Pratt said. “That additional carryover we could use that. We are choosing to allocate it that way. It is the conservative way.”

County Auditor Jason Stephens remembers crunching the numbers to make sure county employees got paid when that 27th pay date happened in 2004.

“It slipped up on us then,” Stephens said. “County employees are paid on a biweekly basis … set by state law. We just had to absorb it. That was one of the things out of our carryover from the previous year. I remember it was one of the years I was pulling my hair to balance. I commend the commission for thinking hard and setting the money aside.”

However, those coming up with plan won’t benefit when they open up their pay envelopes. That’s because elected officials in Ohio are paid a yearly salary, set by the state legislature.

“We will get less of a paycheck,” Pratt said. “Employees will get an extra check. It pays to look ahead and be ready for that kind of thing.”