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Impose limits on payouts Published in the Asbury Park Press 01/09/05An Asbury Park Press editorialSickening? Yes. But for school, county and local officials in New Jersey,
it's par for the course. For state employees, there is a $15,000 cap on how much
retiring employees can collect in accrued sick and vacation time. No such cap
exists for other public employees. The Legislature should impose one immediately
-- preferably lower than $15,000.
For most working stiffs, unused sick and vacation time is either lost or
carried over for a limited period of time. For public employees in many towns
and school districts, there is no limit. Unused time is "banked," then later
cashed in -- most often at retirement. The value of the sick days is calculated
on the basis of the employee's rate of pay at the time they are cashed in, not
their value at the time they were carried over, adding to the tax burden and
further underscoring the abuse of the system.
The payouts are often staggering, driven not only by the lack of limits on
how long the days can be carried over and how many can be cashed in, but by the
ridiculously high number of sick and vacation days negotiated at contract time
by administrators and nonsupervisory employees alike. Fifteen sick days a year
is not uncommon for public employees.
The Hahn case is far from an isolated example. Taxpayers in recent years have
paid out tens of thousands of dollars to public employees in payments for
accrued sick and vacation time. Consider:
Lakewood's former Superintendent of Schools, Ernest J. Cannava, received a
lump sum payment of $60,200 for accrued sick time after 13 years in the
position.
Barnegat Police Chief Edward J. Smith received a $98,703 payout for accrued
sick and vacation time upon officially retiring as of Dec. 31. He used
compensatory time for the four months prior.
In September, the Brick Board of Education more than doubled the amount an
administrator hired after July 1993 may collect in accrued sick time from
$35,000 to $75,000. The board also reduced, from 15 to 10, the number of years
the person must work in the district before being eligible to collect it.
In November, Middletown ratified a police contract that reduced the maximum
sick time accrual for new officers from 150 to 125 days.
When Freehold Regional High School District Superintendent James Wasser
renegotiated a new five-year contract in August that will boost his annual
income to $220,000 by 2009, the board said it was "limiting" how much
accumulated time he could cash in at retirement. He'll be paid for all of his
accumulated vacation days (then at 137), but only 125 unused sick days.
Tinton Falls Borough Administrator Anthony Muscillo, whose annual salary is
$126,000, cashed in a portion of his sick time twice in two years. In 2002, when
he had 162 days of accumulated time, he took a payment of $14,000 in exchange
for 25 days. Two years later, the accumulation was back up to 159 days and in
March he received another $13,250 by selling back 22 days.
The most nauseating example of an
accrued-time payout was in 2002, when the Asbury Park City Council -- under no
legal obligation to do so -- authorized a $67,000 payment to former city manager
Terrance Weldon. That was after Weldon was indicted for extorting money from
land developers in Ocean Township.
An attempt by Sen. Leonard T. Connors Jr., R-Ocean, and former Senate
President Donald T. DiFrancesco, R-Union, to extend the state limits on unused
sick and vacation time to all public employees stalled in 1998. At the time,
Connors said the bill was mistakenly drafted to be retroactive, which might have
prompted mass retirements from municipalities. But the measure was never
amended. It's time for Connors to dust off the bill and resurrect it. Reprint Jerry Yahoo! Groups Links
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