Politics & Government

Christie Calls For Elimination Of Vacation And Sick Time Payouts For Public Workers

Belmar's Mayor Doherty says state should let municipalities decide for themselves

Gov. Chris Christie urged the Legislature on Thursday to pass his plan to eliminate vacation and sick time payouts for retiring public employees, but Belmar Mayor Matthew Doherty said that while he agreed with eliminating the payouts, he also thinks that the decision should be left to the municipalities.

Joined by Bergen County mayors at the armory in Teaneck, Christie said the payouts amount to “a going-away present to public employees who had the great good fortune of not being sick.” But Doherty said he would rather see the state reform civil service and arbitration so municipalities could negotiate more freely with labor unions. 

In 2010, Belmar would have been liable for $768,144 in accumulated absence time to all of its public employees if they had retired that year, according to figures released by the state Department of Community Affairs. That would have costed each residential property taxpayer $252.41.

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Manasquan, according to the 2010 figures, was liable for $662,440 in accumulated absence time. That would have cost each residential property taxpayer $206.83. Manasquan Mayor George Dempsey declined to comment on the legislation until he had time to read it, he said.

"We absolutely would remove payouts for sick time, comp time, holiday and vacation – whatever you didn’t use, the municipalities should not be required to pay that out," Doherty said. "But I don’t think it should be legislated on a state level. I think it should be handled on a local level through negotiations with the public employees."

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Liabilities for unused sick and vacation day benefits total more than $825 million statewide, Christie said. Monmouth County alone owes its 3,294 employees more than 44 years worth of unused time, and the county's budget puts the cost at $5.5 million, according to statewide statistics.

The municipalities, Doherty said, should be able to decide for themselves rather than have the state step in.

"I think it’s an issue that can be handled at the negotiating table. I don’t think they need to give a legislative relief," Doherty said Thursday. "I think in general municipalities operate substantially better than the state does."

Doherty said he would rather see civil service and arbitration reform that eliminated state mandates on how to negotiate union contracts.

"The more freedom allowed to municipalities on how they negotiate with public sector unions, public sector workers, the better for residential property taxpayers," he said.

Currently, Doherty said, if unions and municipalities can't reach an agreement, the matter is handled through a state arbitration process that favors of the public employees.

"The state traditionally, overwhelmingly, falls down on the side of the public employee unions. So it’s almost as if it would make more sense for public employee unions to go to arbitration than have a real negotiation with the municipalities," he said.

Doherty said he would like to remove the state from the negotiating process and let the municipalities and unions negotiate among themselves.

"I think an easier fix would be if the state would remove itself from the negotiation process between municipalities and their collective bargaining units and just let us negotiate," he said. "If one town wants to give those payouts, they should. If another town, like Belmar, does not want to then we should be able to negotiate that."

Christie has called on the Legislature to take action during the remaining 30 days of the lame duck session. The Legislature has approved a $15,000 cap on the payouts and Democrats have proposed scaling it back to a $7,500 cap.

Christie, however, said the payouts must be scrapped altogether.

“These numbers have no bearing to anything that’s real,” he said. “They’re just picking out numbers as a gift to public employees for not being sick.”

He said the argument made by some opponents of the reform — that employees would start using sick days as time off — is without merit.

"I can’t believe that we’re not going to do a common sense reform because we say we can’t control fraud," he said.

State Sen. Loretta Weinberg, who sat in on the press conference, said Democrats have made attempts to work with Christie.

“As with most things the governor brings up, reality is often a little more complex than his rhetoric,” Weinberg said in a statement.

“We need to ensure that in our rush to reform the system, we do not push long-time workers to the exit. If we do, local governments will be faced with having to pay all of those retiring workers now, inadvertently putting themselves in an even more tenuous fiscal position," she said.

Christie called the reform a “common sense” measure and stressed the bipartisan support of 234 mayors across the state.


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