“The following offices, positions and personnel shall be in the unclassified service and shall not be placed under the classified service ... All judges, elected or appointed, and their employees.”

Employees of election boards and numerous other state agencies and boards also are unclassified.

There are no time sheets kept for judicial employees. They have state benefits, but they serve at the pleasure of the judge, which means they can be dismissed at any time without appeal, Thygesen said.

He said his employees are often required to stay late.

“If I’m here till 4 o’clock in the morning with a jury, they (employees) are here until 4 o’clock in the morning,” Thygesen said. “If I work through lunch and, sometimes, through dinner, so do they.”

Alford said he believes Norman’s raising the issue of when judicial employees work is politically motivated.

Norman said he remembers the controversy a few years ago over some state agencies having “ghost” employees who were not required to show up for work.

“A few years ago, the first assistant in the court clerk’s office didn’t come in, and the court clerk (Adaina Riley) got in trouble,” Norman said. “If someone will tell me I can let my employees take off every time I’m not here, I will.”

Court Clerk Paula Sexton said that in the 1970s or early 1980s, judges’ secretaries were employees of the clerk’s office and subject to the same rules as other employees of that office. They were required to work 40 hours a week.

Sexton said she believes there is some resentment in the courthouse between employees who must take vacation or sick leave when they are not at work and employees who don’t have to account for their time.

“However, everyone knows these people work for the judges and not for us, and their hours are decided by the judge they work for,” she said.

Norman said he has asked several judges for an opinion about how much time off employees should have and never gotten a definitive answer.

The late Bill Ed Rogers once told him he always told his employees to “take as much (vacation) as you want, as long as you get your work done.”

Norman said he asked District Attorney Larry Moore for an Attorney General’s opinion on the issue but got back a reply that the AG does not give opinions on matters pertaining to the judiciary.

Norman said he will attend a bar conference this month and hopes to raise the question there and get an answer.