HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) – Page after page. Payout after payout.
An ABC 27 right-to-know request found that in the past two years alone (2013-15), the Pennsylvania House and Senate doled out well over $3 million each to departing employees who accumulated unused sick and vacation time.
Twenty walked out the door with more than $30,000.
Eleven got checks of more than $40,000.
Nine topped $50,000.
And a dozen former workers collected $60,000 or more.
Watchdogs are barking.
“You shouldn’t be able to use sick days as a financial investment vehicle. It shouldn’t be a golden parachute,” said Eric Epstein of Rock the Capital.
But the payouts are policy, the payouts and legal, and there’s bipartisan participation.
Randy Albright left the Senate Democrats after nearly three decades to become Governor Wolf’s Budget Secretary.
Albright said he used just two sick days in 29 years, and though he hasn’t technically left the building, he was rewarded with $115,331.36 in unused sick and vacation pay when he left the Senate for the administration.
“I do think it’s important to sit here and speak to you,” Albright said during a recent interview. “I’m not going to hide from what the facts are and the compensation that I did receive.”
Albright wouldn’t comment on the appropriateness of the payout policy, but the guy who’s tasked with balancing the state’s books insists if you want good employees you have to offer them a good deal.
“The compensation levels need to be appropriate to attract that caliber staff,” Albright said.
He’s not alone in cashing largesse upon leaving legislative employ.
The Senate’s former chief clerk, Russ Faber, got a going away of $104,512.
The current chair of the Public Utility Commission, Gladys Brown, left Senate Democrats with $78,680.22.
Krystjan Callahan was chief of staff to House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R-Allegheny). He left for a lobbying job with a $62,000 payout for unused sick and vacation time.
Fiscal watchdogs are also barking.
“This is why people who aren’t in government, or at least in politics, are frustrated in the system,” said Pennsylvania’s Auditor General Eugene DePasquale (D), a former state Representative from York. “When you see numbers like that, clearly there’s no cap on it, there’s no control on it. Very few, if any people in the private sector have anything remotely close to that. Reforms have to be put in place to tackle this.”
Current lawmakers have called for reforms.
“It rattles my chain quite a bit,” said Representative Dan Moul (R-Adams). “Now that it’s been brought to light, we’ve gotta look into it.”
Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati (R-Jefferson) insists the problem is much bigger than just the legislature and is commonwealth-wide.
“Let me tell you, Dennis, there’s some egregious things going on,” Scarnati said.
The comments from Moul and Scarnati came in February, but no reforms have been implemented or, to our knowledge, recommended by rank-and-file or leadership.
Scarnati is correct. The problem does not begin and end with the legislature. A longtime employee under the governor’s jurisdiction who was recently let go boasted on Facebook about accumulating sick days years ago when he made $10 an hour and cashing them all out at his final $55 an hour rate.
Again, it’s policy and it’s legal.
These unused sick and vacation payouts are over and above pensions (which can be in the six-figures) and the lump sum pension payouts (which can be in the six figures).
Critics call them wrong.
Policies can be changed. In fact, House Democrats under the leadership of Todd Eachus in 2010 put caps on how many sick and vacation days employees can accumulate. But other caucuses and other branches of government are slow to make the switch, which begs an important question: what’s the incentive for policy protectors to make changes before it’s their turn to cash out?
“At the Capitol, the most important term is OPM, Other People’s Money, and when you’re spending other people’s money you have a tendency to be much more generous than you would be if it were your own money,” Epstein said.
