Posted on 01/09/2012 9:47:32 AM PST by BenLurkin
Thousands of Los Angeles County workers who collected a reported $48 million in unused vacation pay could dramatically impact both the county’s budget and pension funds, according to county officials.
KNX 1070′s Vytas Safronikas reports the Board of Supervisors is outraged over a new report showing dozens of retirees receiving hefty compensation packages.
The Los Angeles Times reported on one Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Lt. Marie Hannah who retired with a $143,000 annual pension and a one-time payment of $183,683 for unused time off.
The package was reportedly for a combination of 325 days of vacation pay, sick time, comp time and holidays, the Times reported.
Now county officials are warning such extravagant payouts could put the county’s fiscal health at risk.
“It has an impact on the current budget, as it will have a direct impact on liability of the pension fund,” said Supervisor Mike Antonovich.
Antonovich recommended taking action either directly through administrative measures or through labor negotiations to tackle the problem.
Most employers restrict how much comp time can be accrued by any single employee, but the report is a clear reminder that abuse isstill rampant.
“The board is concerned that this is an abuse that is out of control,” Antonovich said.
(Excerpt) Read more at losangeles.cbslocal.com ...
This story should be two years old. Glad they’re finally admitting it. Or is the fact that they are admitting it really, REALLY bad news?
Looks like they are closing the barn door after the horses are out.
Under the old CSRS system you could apply it to your service time computation for retirement. 2000 hours of saved sick leave would give you an extra year, which would be worth another 1% to be tossed into the computation of your annual annuity (theoretically you could get 1.75% but ordinarily if you entered federal service at the age of 35, you'd probably not saved up that much nor would you be out of the 1% category).
The thought was this extra benefit would encourage employees to NOT WASTE SICK LEAVE.
The new FERS system allows you to do nothing at all with it. The thought now is that employees were probably not wasting sick leave, so why pay them for it in any way.
It's amazing that there are states that actually pay people for unused sick leave. On the other hand, it's not unbelievable that people don't use it ~ I still had about 99% of all my sick leave the day I retired.
Even got an award from Office of Personnel Management for PERFECT ATTENDANCE ~ a bizarre little award if you think about it. Obviously I didn't fit the public's notion of what government employees are up to.
They need to find out who voted these unsupportable pension and benefit increases in and then ride them out of town on a rail. Once benefits and pensions are voted in, the Lib courts make sure they can’t be reduced. The taxpayers are just absolutely, totally screwed. The rich ones can move and the poor ones and middle class ones get the burden of supporting their government overlords.
When I found out that I had voted to give huge payouts to City of Los Angeles employees when they retired, I was outraged. I was livid. I immediately called for a full-scale internal investigation of me, with nothing off-limits and no time limit. I will not rest until I get to the bottom of what I did, learn its full scope and implications, and discover what I can do to make sure I never allow myself to do this again.
Because this matter is the subject of an ongoing investigation at this time, I cannot comment on any specifics. When the investigative process has run its course, I will subject the report of the investigators to a close and detailed examination. Because this investigation will touch on many personnel matters, the full report cannot and will not be released to the public, although an executive summary will be prepared as quickly as possible.
When the majority of voters are:
a.) sucking off the public teat, and/or
b.) not paying taxes
this is the wholly unsurprising outcome.
Too bad if you’re actually a productive taxpayer. You’ve just been robbed. And there’s little you can do about it other than flee from that socialist regime.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.