More paid leave than they’ll ever need

Employers offer paid time off as a quality-of-life benefit, a means of providing some professional and personal balance as well as paycheck protection in times of illness and bereavement. Paid leave isn't supposed to make workers rich.

Unless you're a Clark County firefighter. For these public employees especially, sick and vacation pay serve primarily to augment salaries, create lucrative overtime opportunities and provide a windfall upon retirement.

It's another spending issue that helps explain why Southern Nevada's local governments have such severe budget crises, and a reminder that no matter how bad this economy gets and how many Nevadans join the ranks of the unemployed, taxpayers and businesses are stuck with the bill for wages and benefits they can never expect to get themselves.

Last Sunday's Review-Journal published a list of Clark County government's 50 highest-paid employees. In the 2008 calendar year, 32 of the 50 were Fire Department employees. All 32 were paid at least $200,000 last year and five made at least $300,000.

These figures aren't base salaries -- county firefighters are supposed to top out at $74,000. Every one of those big earners padded his wallet with "sweeteners," additional forms of compensation tucked away in the firefighters' contract, such as longevity bonuses, certification bonuses, call-back and travel pay and overtime.

The five firefighters who were paid at least $300,000 in 2008 also saw their incomes balloon because they cashed in huge amounts of unused paid leave upon retirement.

How can firefighters stockpile so much paid leave in their relatively short careers? Because the county gives them more than they'll ever need.

Clark County firefighters get 12 days of sick leave each year. They also get eight vacation days in each of their first five years on the job. Vacation time grows with seniority, maxing out at 15 days after 15 years of service.

Getting 20 to 27 days of paid leave each year seems lousy for a public employee -- until you understand that Clark County firefighters work 10 24-hour shifts per month. It's an extremely favorable schedule that enables firefighters to take second jobs or run their own businesses for additional income. And when they do have to deal with an illness -- whether their own or a family member's -- they might have to take only one sick day instead of the three or four that an eight-hour shift worker has to burn.

So a first-year firefighter gets the equivalent of two months of paid leave. Not that firefighters use it all. They have incentives to hang on to as much of it as possible.

Firefighters can bank as much as 100 days of sick leave and 30 days of vacation -- more than a year's worth of paid time off. Once they have 30 days of vacation stored, they must use newly accrued vacation time or cash it out.

Sick leave is much different, however. Firefighters with 11 or more years of service have the option of accepting a sliding payment for unused sick time beyond the 100 shifts they've banked. The less sick time they've used in the previous year, the bigger the payment. That can provide firefighters with the equivalent of an 8 percent pay raise.

Moreover, firefighters who use one or zero sick days in a year get four bonus vacation days. Firefighters who use more than one but five or fewer sick days in a year get three bonus vacation days.

Such incentives exist in the private sector. The few employers that still separate sick pay from vacation pay generally don't allow workers to accrue huge amounts of leave -- companies can't afford to. To discourage workers from calling out "ill" the week around Christmas every year, they'll give employees who stay healthy a vacation bonus for not abusing sick leave.

But those workers have to forfeit the sick leave they didn't use. County Fire Department workers get to have it both ways: they cash out the unused sick leave and collect bonus vacations days -- and they can cash out some of the bonus vacation days.

When they do use their paid leave, fill-in colleagues get to collect inflated call-back and overtime pay. That allowed each of the department's 800 or so firefighters to collect an average of $26,053 in call-back and overtime wages last year, propelling the average firefighter income to $118,196.

And when they retire, they get to cash out their unused sick and vacation leave at their final salary, not the lower salary they were earning when the hours were accumulated. Firefighters can redeem between 50 and 75 percent of their unused sick leave, depending on the number of years they worked for the department before retirement.

Over the past three years, the county has made 52 sick and vacation leave payouts to retiring firefighters totaling almost $2.3 million -- an average of $43,896 per firefighter. How's that for a retirement gift from the taxpayers?

County records show firefighters responding in predictable fashion to every economic incentive and disincentive in their contract. Between 2006 and 2008, firefighters used less than half their awarded sick leave but almost all of their vacation leave. The county currently has almost $16 million in sick and vacation leave liabilities for fire personnel.

These issues extend to other Southern Nevada fire departments, and most other local government work forces as well.

So why pick on Clark County firefighters? Because they deserve it.

When the county asked firefighters to accept smaller pay raises this year to make up for revenue declines, the firefighters refused. Their counteroffer? Demanding two additional days of paid leave per year in exchange for accepting the reduced raises.

This after a Review-Journal investigation revealed firefighters were manipulating their schedules and duties to maximize overtime opportunities for colleagues nearing retirement, inflating their pension payouts in the process. More time off means more overtime, which means more income and bigger pensions.

And last week, when the county manager's office asked departments to come up with 5 percent budget reductions to keep the government's finances solvent, the Fire Department responded with cuts totaling ... 1.4 percent. How generous. With a $115 million revenue shortfall expected in 2010, the county almost certainly will have to close programs and lay off employees.

When the county sits down to hammer out new contracts with the firefighters and other bargaining units, management negotiators need to take drastic measures to reel in compensation beyond base salaries.

They can start by combining sick and vacation pay, reducing the number of days off handed out each year and ending the massive retirement payouts for unused leave. How many jobs and services could be saved if the county didn't have to write five- and six-figure checks to everyone who quits?

The giveaways have to be stopped soon, or there'll be nothing left to give.

Glenn Cook (gcook@reviewjournal.com) is a Review-Journal editorial writer.