70-1408. EMPLOYEES. The port commission shall have authority to retain legal counsel, and other professional and technically trained persons, on general or special retainer, and to create and fill positions, to fix wages and salaries thereof, to pay costs and assessments involved in securing or arranging to secure employees, and to establish such benefits for employees, including holiday pay, vacations or vacation pay, retirement and pension benefits, medical, surgical or hospital care, life, accident, or health disability insurance, and similar benefits, as commonly established by other employers of similar employees, as the port commission shall provide. The port commission shall have authority to provide or pay such benefits directly, or to provide for such benefits by the purchase of insurance policies or by entering into contracts with and compensating a person, firm, agency or organization furnishing such benefits, or by making contributions to vacation plans or funds, or health and welfare plans and funds, or pension plans or funds, or similar plans or funds, as commonly established by other employers of similar employees and in which the port district is permitted to participate for particular classifications of its employees by the trustee or other persons responsible for the administration of such established plans or funds. The port commission shall have the authority to utilize and compensate agents for the purpose of paying, in the name and by the check of such agent or agents or otherwise, wages, salaries and other benefits to employees, or particular classifications thereof, and for the purpose of withholding payroll taxes and paying over tax moneys so withheld to appropriate governmental agencies, on a combined basis with the wages, salaries, benefits, or taxes of other employers or otherwise; to enter into such contracts and arrangements with and to transfer by check such funds from time to time to any such agent or agents so appointed as are necessary to accomplish such salary, wage, benefit, or tax payments as though the port district were a private employer, notwithstanding any other provision of the law to the contrary. The funds of a port district transferred to such an agent or agents for the payment of wages or salaries of its employees in the name or by the check of such agent or agents shall be subject to garnishments with respect to salaries or wages so paid, notwithstanding any provision of the law relating to municipal corporations to the contrary.

History:

[70-1408, added 1969, ch. 55, sec. 44, p. 144.]