Bill > A688

Introduced Session

This bill limits the maximum amount of terminal leave that a local unit can pay, for accumulated and unused leave time, to an employee who is separating from service through retirement or otherwise. Under the bill, an employee could not be paid for the full amount of leave time credited at the beginning of the employee's final year of employment if the employee does not work the whole year. As used in the bill, "leave time" means vacation time, holiday time, sick leave time, or personal time credited by a local unit of government to the employees of the local unit at the beginning of a calendar year. The bill is intended to address a recent circumstance where a provision of a collective negotiations agreement between a municipality and its police union effectively allowed a retiring police officer to work one month into a calendar year, retire on February 1st, and collect a lump sum of over $34,000 representing payment for the entire year's worth of vacation, sick, personal time, holiday time, and other leave time to which the officer would have been entitled had he not retired. This contract provision, while likely entered into by the local unit and the union in good faith, required a large payment of property tax dollars to a retired police officer who worked only one month out of the 12 in the calendar year. These types of payments should not be allowed to continue, and any local unit employee who retires should receive a payment for unused leave time prorated by the number of days that the employee is actually employed by and reports to work in the local unit.

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Nancy Muñoz (R)*, 

Introduced, Referred to Assembly State and Local Government Committee (on 01/27/2016)