Virtual assistant issues- does this seem sketchy to you?

Hello- I’m hoping I can rely on your experience to help guide me through this. I apologize for any formatting errors i am mobile.I have a virtual assistant that operates under an llc, works as an independent contractor for myself and 3 other people in a very low cost of living area.The work is probably 3 total hours a day, but a lot of it is intermittent work through out the day, and he will flip from my work to client Bs work to client Cs work.An example of how it’s intermittent is check the email and reply (5 minutes) answer the phone and schedule someone (10 minutes) etc.Because this work is intermittent I guarantee 4 hours of pay at $20 an hour.Two months ago he said that to continue working for me he would have to raise his rate to $27 an hour with a guarantee of 4 hours paid a day.This was my max budget but I agreed to it letting them know it’s my max budget for the position because I like them and think they do a good job and if they are that hard up for money I’d rather them not drive Uber.Today he informed me his changing his rate to 13.50 an hour, and billing for 8 hours a day while he is “on call” it all works out to the same number.My issues: 1-He did this without any prior discussion with myself or partners 2- we don’t have 4 hours of work a day let alone 8 hours of work. To be fair and generous we agreed to pay the rate with a guaranteed 4 hours paid 3- if he were working 8 hours a day I would adjust the hours on the clock to represent the business needs (he currently is off at 3 pm) 4- because he knew the max budget was $27 @ 4 hours guaranteed, by changing his rate to 13.50 he now has wiggle room to increase it and renegotiate his pay saying he “only makes 13.50 hr” 5- im frankly worried that he may come back later and try “well I have in writing 27/hr” 6- this seems incredibly sketchy to me. What is your hot take on it or thoughts about this situation.All in all I like them but they occasionally do things like this that makes me hesitant to trust them.-how do you pay a va for intermittent work like described above? - do you have virtual assistants keep a log of what they did and time spent each pay period and simply pay total hours worked?should I just hire someone local at another rate and make them a regular employee? I’m afraid they will be bored out of their minds trying to keep them busy for 8 total hours chained to an office and desk, that is why I went about finding someone that has multiple clients that wouldn’t get bored. see hubwealthy.com/wealthy