State employees cash in as they check out
Ohio taxpayers pick up the multimillion-dollar annual tab for a lucrative employee perk rarely included among private sector use-it-or-lose-it benefits.
Longtime state employees who retire or resign — or even are fired — often walk away from their jobs with big checks for unused vacation, sick leave and personal days.
While few businesses allow employees to stockpile time off — possibly for decades — and redeem it for cash, the long-standing largess for state employees is written into state law and regulations and incorporated into union contracts.
For example, one of Gov. Mike DeWine’s new cabinet directors — Department of Commerce leader Sheryl Maxfield — cashed out her leave balance from 34 years in the attorney general’s office for $76,085 early this year before beginning her new job that pays $150,010 a year.
New Ohio Environmental Protection Agency Director Laurie Stevenson, who is paid $152,006 annually, received a $29,537 payout without even leaving the agency where she has worked for 20 years. Eight other DeWine cabinet directors cashed out for amounts ranging from $585 to $9,430.
Some high-ranking members of the administration of former two-term Gov. John Kasich also left with sizable checks. Former State Highway Patrol superintendent and Public Safety Director John Born received $68,491. Kasich’s former communication director, Jim Lynch, cashed out the largest amount among the governor’s office employees — $41,872.
A total of 5,114 state employees cashed out separation-leave claims for $32.5 million last year, with the average payout totaling $10,315 for the 3,080 workers who received more than $1,000.
All told, 528 departing state employees — and some who simply transferred to other state positions — received more than $20,000 each, according to state records obtained by The Dispatch.
Well-paid administrators and managers, as well as workers represented by five state employee unions, can save and cash out up to 720 hours or 18 weeks of vacation after 24 years on the job. About 4,000 state workers represented by SEIU District 1199 can bankroll up to 960 hours, or 24 weeks.
Even unionized state employees who depart with one to three years of service can bank up to six weeks of vacation pay to take with them. It’s a benefit available to the vast majority of the state’s 51,000 employees, who also can choose to cash out their leave money on a year-to-year or periodic basis with certain balances.
By also cashing out carried-over sick leave at 55 or 50 percent of its monetary value and tacking on some unused personal days, it can constitute serious money for longtime state employees, some of whom bank unused time from their six weeks of annual vacation.
The average annual salary of all workers who claimed unpaid leave money last year was $55,917. For those who received more than $1,000, the average annual salary was $62,650.
A $122,000-a-year psychologist supervisor who was a 29-year employee with the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services retired with the biggest separation-leave check last year — $107,941.
An environmental administrator with the Department of Agriculture left with $93,323, an Industrial Commission hearing officer pocketed $85,025, and a guidance counselor at the State School for the Blind received $84,456. A deputy director at the Department of Transportation departed with $81,207.
State agencies pay their accrued separation leave liabilities into a fund managed by the Department of Administrative Services to make sure the money will be available. Payouts in recent years ranged from a high of $40.5 million in 2013 to a low of $29 million in 2016.
Six-figure parting gifts for government employees have sparked calls for reform and tighter limits in other states such as Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey, where limits on payouts are more lax than in Ohio.
Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio, a good-government group, said, “On the face of it, the thing that makes me swallow is thinking about people leaving with enormous checks.”
Perhaps it is time to study the payout practice and where the limit on carryover time should be placed, she said. “It’s always a balance ... at some point it becomes ridiculous and unfair to taxpayers. There is a line where it gets beyond what is reasonable,” she said.
In some ways, it is unfair that the vast majority of private-sector workers must use their time off or lose it and typically are not allowed to carry any balances into following years, Turcer said.
Chris Mabe, president of the largest state employee union, the 30,000-member Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, defends the bargained-for payout practice.
Some state employees, like highway workers and the 8,000 unionized state prison employees, can be denied leave as “essential” workers, forcing them to carry over vacation balances, Mabe said. “Often, they simply can’t take their leaves. That’s the reality of public service and one of the reasons we negotiated the cash out,” he said.
“State employee union members, as opposed to managers, are much less likely to have large balances of sick or vacation leave. Managers can take comp time and have flexible schedules. A correction officer can’t do that . ... It’s the outlier who is able to accumulate large balances of sick or vacation leave among state bargaining-unit members. And if they did that, that means they worked their tail off ” and missed time off over the years, Mabe said.