Retiring community college president payout sparks call for new cap rules

Mount Wachusett is doling out $334G

A retired community college president’s staggering $334,000 golden parachute is breathing new life into calls to rein in the generous payouts, where reforms to date — including caps on vacation-time buyouts — have fallen short of the mark, lawmakers warn.

“It’s mind-blowing,” said state Sen. Ryan Fattman, a Webster Republican. “There has to be something that can be done legislatively and I think these are the types of stories that give those efforts a lot of traction. This is something my staff and I have been talking a lot about.”

The big payday Daniel Asquino stands to earn from his retirement after three decades at Mount Wachusett Community College is fueled largely by a whopping $266,060 payout — split into two checks — for more than 1,250 days of unused sick time, according to the college.

Combined with $68,079 in unused vacation time, Asquino stands to rake in even more than the $269,984 former Bridgewater State University President Dana Mohler-Faria got in 2015, then considered the largest payout from the last decade.

Mohler-Faria’s case prompted the state’s Board of Higher Education to draft new rules for the state’s colleges, which capped vacation payouts at 64 days and didn’t allow any unused vacation time to be converted into earned sick time, which can be cashed out at 20 percent its value come retirement.

Asquino’s payday — first reported yesterday by the Worcester Telegram & Gazette — falls within those legal stands, thanks to his massive supply of unused sick time. He told the paper he rarely took time off.

But Fattman said he’s concerned the new rules could encourage current employees to simply use vacation days even when they’re sick, in an effort to rack up uncapped sick time come retirement.

Gov. Charlie Baker yesterday called Asquino’s payout “disappointing.”

“Governor Baker believes all state entities must take fiscal responsibility seriously,” his spokesman, Billy Pitman, said.

Baker is floating for the second time a proposal that would cap and freeze all unused sick time at 1,000 hours for state employees. But the legislation applies solely to those who work under the executive branch.

A separate bill imposing the same 1,000-hour cap, filed by House Minority Leader Brad Jones, is intended to “touch (public college employees) as well, because they’re technically state employees,” he said.

“We would be as expansive as possible,” the North Reading Republican said. “Even if you capped it at 1,000 hours, you’d basically get half your salary as your sick-leave buyback. That’s a potentially huge exposure to the commonwealth.”

Efforts to reach Chris Gabrieli, the chair of the state’s Board of Higher Education, weren’t successful yesterday.