Lake County election staff receive time-off accommodations

The Lake County Board of Commissioners approved changes to accumulating and using time off hours for Election and Voter Registration Board staff after the primary election — and in anticipation of the upcoming general election.

Election Board Director Michelle Fajman said that employees typically accumulate up to 240 hours of time off and have to use the time within a given year.

The commissioners approved for the election staff to accumulate up to 480 hours of vacation time through the end of the year and for the staff to be able to use it through 2021, Fajman said.

It’s a one-time exception, not a change to the employee handbook, she said.

The election office has 22 fulltime employees, Fajman said, adding that a handful of employees are new and don’t have much time off accrued. After the general election, Fajman said she believes the majority of employees will average between 350 and 400 hours of accrued time off.

Lake County first responders currently are allowed to accrue 480 hours, so the election officials decided to follow that number to make sure the office follows suit with other county employees, Fajman said.

Typically, Fajman said that whatever time off employees accrue in the final quarter of the year has to be used in the first quarter of the following year. To avoid all employees taking weeks off in the beginning of the 2021, Fajman said she made sure to request that employees can use their time earned in 2020 throughout 2021.

“Everyone has different times taking off,” Fajman said. “By being able to stretch that out, I’m comfortable that the public wouldn’t see any decreases in services.”

After the primary election was moved from May to June, employees in the office worked long hours to complete the election and already accrued approximately 150 hours of time off, Fajman said.

Additionally, because the employees worked longer hours all of May, they weren’t able to take much time off, she said. As the general election approaches, Fajman said employees would reach the 240-hour threshold quickly with no possibility of taking the time off by the end of the year, she said.

For example, Fajman said, the staff has been working hard processing the first 15,238 mail-in ballots received for the general election, as of Wednesday morning.

“There’s just no way for them to get (time off ) in,” Fajman said.