Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter has rolled back a generous sick-leave and vacation-accrual policy that allowed Republican Gov. Bill Owens’ top appointees to cash out more than $331,000 of unused time when they left office this year.
Ritter announced Sunday that he signed an executive order last week capping the amount of unused time executive directors of state departments can collect while in office.
The order also requires those officials to report their vacation and sick-leave time to the governor’s chief of staff.
“This executive order sets forth clear and equitable guidelines for leave accrual, removing any ambiguities and placing the executive directors on equal footing with other state employees,” Ritter said in a prepared statement. “These rules are fair and they protect taxpayer dollars.”
Under the new policy, the 15 executive directors in charge of state departments will accrue 13.33 annual leave hours per month, or 20 days per year. It also allows for the accrual of 6.66 hours of sick leave per month, or 10 days per year.
When they leave their jobs, executive directors with fewer than five years of service in state government will be able to collect a maximum of 192 hours, or 24 days of service.
For those with more than five years of service, the maximum accrual is 240 hours, or 30 days.
Bob Lee, Owens’ chief of staff, changed the policy for cashing in unused vacation and sick-leave time in December 2004. Lee revised the policy in a memo that said: “The new policy permits an employee to carry-over all of his or her unused annual and sick leave from one year to the next, and pays employees for the accumulated unused annual leave and a portion of accumulated unused sick leave upon termination.”
In recent weeks, The Denver Post disclosed that 13 top Owens officials collected at least $331,000 in unused vacation and sick-leave time. Most officials collected more than $20,000.
Marva Livingston Hammons, former head of the Colorado Department of Human Services, reported that she had 823 hours of unused vacation time when she left the job this year. She received a payment of $55,528 – the highest amount paid out.
The department currently is reviewing that payment.
When asked for documentation to prove that agency heads had accumulated the unused time they claimed, some departments said they did not keep such records. Others had to re-create time sheets.
In a Feb. 27 e-mail from Lee to his successor as chief of staff, Jim Carpenter, Lee took the blame for a confusing policy that allowed some officials to collect unlimited amounts of time off.
“In retrospect, it is now apparent that the policy regarding carry-over of annual and sick leave was not as clearly delineated as it should have been and could have been misinterpreted,” Lee wrote. Lee said he supported Ritter’s review of the policy and the payments.
Staff writer Mark P. Couch can be reached at 303-954-1794 or mcouch@denverpost.com.
