A bill passed by the Legislature this week that would end furloughs for upwards of 80,000 state employees could save millions in banked vacation if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger chooses to sign it.
Of course, chances of that are slim. Schwarzenegger has stuck to his guns where furloughs have been concerned, and his spokesman, Aaron McLear, said earlier this week that the governor would probably veto the bill.
As we reported last week, one of the concerns about furloughs is that they have caused many state workers to bank more vacation than ever before.
The bill, known as SBX8 29 and carried by Senate President Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, would exempt employees from furloughs if their salaries are paid with 5 percent or less from the state’s general fund.
The Sacramento Bee put together a list of departments a couple weeks ago with large numbers of employees that would be exempt from furloughs should the bill pass. On that list were a number of departments whose employees had a history of racking up large leave balances between 2006 and mid-2009, among them:
- The Department of Developmental Services: $16,945,789
- The Department of Mental Health: $13,900,406
- The Department of Social Services: $7,219,063
- The Department of Fish and Game: $5,252,483
Other departments such as CalPERS ($3,194,743) would likely have large numbers of exempt employees as well. The State Compensation Insurance Fund ($11,684,458) was exempted from furloughs last year. You can check out other departments in our database.
Our report also identified a number of employees who had accumulated large amounts of comp time in addition to unused vacation days. One employee took home $815,000 when he left state service.
The payout for Kim Nguyen, a former doctor at the prison substance abuse facility in Corcoran, includes more than twice the allowable amount of vacation time and nearly 10 times the limit of comp time for physicians, records show.
In an interview, Nguyen said a heavy workload kept him from using his vacation, and his supervisors paid for extra shifts in comp time instead of overtime, leaving him few options.
“They never hired enough doctors,” said Nguyen, who was featured in a 2008 San Jose Mercury News story that also identified large vacation payouts to state workers. “I never complained so they thought we could handle it. … They kept asking us to work more.”
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