A perk that can make a taxpayer sick
Charles Gilbert warned local governments 20 years ago that policies like paying out for sick pay would cause financial hardships.
But it was the early 1990s when he wrote a study with two other Western Illinois University colleagues — long before the Great Recession forced all of us to look at these types of perks with a jaundiced eye.
It’s 2011 now and no longer can public perks like this be tolerated. Make all the excuses you want — public employees, employers and elected officials have plenty — it just isn’t right to use taxpayers’ money in this way.
“This isn’t a new concern and it’s a big deal,” Gilbert told Daily Herald staff writer Jake Griffin. Sick days, he said, are “a benefit meant to be there if you needed it. That’s all it is. You did not earn a payout.”
And that’s how sick days should be viewed, not as an opportunity to earn extra compensation. Yet, as Griffin reported, some suburban municipalities do pay out for sick days not used. Naperville, for example, spent more than $1 million in sick-day payouts deposited into a “health savings account” for 45 retirees in 2010. Schaumburg contributed $200,000 for such accounts for eight retirees in 2010.
Naperville Councilman Grant Wehrli sees the folly in what that community is doing. “I’m all for people getting sick days, but it’s not a retirement plan. When you have to pay over a million dollars a year in sick-day payouts, we can’t continue that practice.”
They sure can’t. Naperville is considering changes that would significantly reduce the maximum amount of credit from its current 90 days.
That compares to Mundelein, which pays for up to 125 unused sick days and Geneva, which pays a maximum of 60.
But why pay at all? If employees complain, all they have to do is look to the private sector to see that it’s a perk not afforded to most people.
According to a 2010 study by WorldAtWork, a global human resources association, about 80 percent of companies do not pay out unused sick time when an employee leaves or retires. 80 percent.
How can this be justified in the public sector? Griffin quoted a benefits spokesman for the Chicago chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, who tried to argue that it’s “earned compensation.”
“The taxpayer shouldn’t care where the money goes,” said Hank Scheff, director of research and benefits. “(Workers) earn the money; it’s not the taxpayer’s money. That compensation they earned is their money. It’s another dollar in the compensation package.”
It’s time to change those benefits and compensation packages moving forward. Union and elected officials who make these agreements need to understand that all the money they dole out is indeed taxpayer money. And we and taxpayers do care how it’s spent.