When psychiatrist Gertrudis Agcaoili retired last year from a state mental hospital in Napa, California, she took with her a $608,821 check for unused leave banked in a career that spanned three decades.
She wasn’t alone. More than 111,000 people who left jobs as employees of the 12 most populous U.S. states collected $711 million last year for unused vacation and other paid time off, according to payroll data on 1.4 million public workers compiled by Bloomberg.
California employees accounted for 39 percent of that total. Since 2005, the state’s workers collected $1.4 billion for accumulated leave, calculated at their last pay rate, regardless of when the time was accrued. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie calls such payments “boat checks” because they can be large enough to buy yachts.
Managers and employees throughout California government routinely ignore a rule limiting accrued time off to 640 hours, or 16 weeks. The accumulation of vacation hours accelerated in California from 2005 through 2010, fueled by a state policy forcing workers to take unpaid time off, or furloughs, before using paid leave.
That requirement helped reduce short-term payroll costs and balance budgets under former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, and current Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, while deepening the state’s future obligation.
Unused leave grew to $3.9 billion in 2011 from $1.4 billion in 2003, according to state financial reports, partly because of staff shortages and around-the-clock needs at agencies such as prisons that forced employees to put off vacations.
Since 2005, more than 1,390 full-time California state workers collected “boat checks” that were greater than their annual base pay, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Those workers were paid a total of $141 million, or an average of $101,274.
Of the 100 biggest payments in 2011 in the dozen states, all but 10 went to California state workers. The average payout for the top 100 was $178,267, in addition to regular wages.
Texas doesn’t pay for unused compensatory time or holiday time, and unused sick time is paid only in the case of an employee’s death, to the worker’s estate, said R.J. DeSilva, a spokesman for the state comptroller’s office.
In California, Agcaoili, now 79, cashed out 2,893 hours of annual leave when she retired in August 2011. That meant she had accumulated the equivalent of 72 weeks’ worth of time off.
Her lump-sum payment brought her total wages for the year to $770,870, according to the controller’s office. Since 2005, she had been paid $2.4 million as a state worker. She now receives a $199,000 annual pension, according to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System.
