California Pays $486 Million from 2006 – mid 2009 to 52,000 Employees for Time-off Benefits

It’s good work if you can get it, i.e., being employed by the State of California that is.  The pay is great, retirement at an early age is fabulous, amazing benefits and the State pays a ton for not taking time off.  Consider the following real case examples from the Golden State:

• California paid an employee vacation and compensatory time to quit and leave with more $800,000.
• The former president of the State Compensation Insurance Fund, a man named James C. Tudor Jr., allegedly got six times more vacation time than allowed and he made more than $550,000 after being fired as the result of an internal probe that “uncovered serious abuses at the highest levels . . . .”
• Another state employee got $815,000 when he quit because of accumulated comp time and unused vacation days.
• A doctor who worked at the prison substance abuse facility got more than twice the allowable amount of vacation time and nearly 10 times the limit of comp time for physicians.

See the story in the Ventura County Star, which says,

“In the past four years, nearly 500 government workers earned six-figure paychecks mostly for unused vacation.  In total, the state spent $486 million from 2006 to mid-2009 to pay more than 52,000 employees for time-off benefits, which include a small percentage of unused comp time and holidays that weren’t taken.  Many of those cash payments appeared to violate rules designed to limit how much vacation time state workers can accumulate during their careers.”

Related posts:

1. Federal Employees Paid More than Public Employees
2. In 2008 Average Federal Worker’s Total Compensation $160,767 & Average Private Sector Worker’s Comp $69,790
3. Government Insanity – Small California City Pays Three Employees $1.6 Annual Salary
4. Federal Workers Now Paid Twice as Much as Private Sector Workers
5. Inflated Federal Pay: How Americans Are Overtaxed to Overpay the Civil Service
6. California’s $500-billion Pension Time Bomb
7. American Taxpayers Work to Support Highly Paid Government Workers
8. How Public Servants Became Our Masters
9. Government Lunacy: New York Pays Teacher $100,000 a Year to Sit in Room and Do Nothing
10. California Has $20 Billion Deficit & Will Run Out of Money April 1 So CA Senate Lunatics Pass Bill to Spend $200 Billion a Year on State Single Payor Healthcare