Politics & Government

As Christie Calls for Elimination of Worker Payouts, Township Says It's Already Controlling Costs

Lacey officials say township's liability limited due to unused sick and vacation time payout cap, but Governor pushing for a total end to practice of paying workers for unused sick and vacation days

Mayor Gary Quinn was one of 234 municipal officials from across the state who supported Gov. Chris Christie when he urged the Legislature on Thursday to pass his plan to eliminate vacation and sick time payouts for retiring public employees.

Joined by Bergen County mayors at an armory in Teaneck, Christie said the payouts amount to a “a going-away present to public employees who had the great good fortune of not being sick.”

Liabilities for unused sick and vacation day benefits total more than $825 million statewide, Christie said.

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“Every tax dollar that’s used to cash out unused sick and vacation days is a dollar that should be going to limit a tax increase and be sent right back to the taxpayer,” Christie said. "The only way to deal with property taxes is the lessen the amount we spend."

Christie 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.

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Lacey is a few steps ahead of the legislature, Quinn said. Since the 1980s the township had imposed its own $15,000-per-employee cap on payouts. The police department has a cap of $20,000.

But the issue still poses a problem as some township employees accumulate their time and use all of it before retirement, Quinn said.

Funds are set aside each year for this reason and put a “burden on towns,” Quinn said.

“It’s like a savings account for these individuals,” he said. “When the Governor came forward with a lot of these token items, I was in support of his reform.”

Quinn estimated that the township paid back approximately $25,000 in the last year.

Although, Quinn said current employees are entitled to such benefits because it is part of their contract, he supports reform for future hires, he said.

“I think I’ve always been outspoken in town that I don’t want to hurt current employees,” he said. “We have to make changes for the future. We’ll just keep plugging away and in time, things will get better. Taxpayers have to be the number one priority”

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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