THE BEAT GOES ON
Waste and Abuse in Local Government Employee Compensation and Benefits
December 2009
Here is the link to the report:
http://www.state.nj.us/sci/pdf/The%20Beat%20Goes%20On.pdf
This is a hot topic on the street as well as on some of the forums today. No commentary be me is necessary given the damning but not surprising findings.
Here is the section on Hoboken from pages 31-33 on the report:
Hoboken:
Municipalities across New Jersey are plagued by fiscal difficulties, but this Hudson County city has been particularly hard hit. Over the past several years, Hoboken has been mired in a financial crisis that has forced it to lay off workers, freeze hiring, cut services and boost local property taxes by nearly 80 percent. In 2008, the city failed to adopt a municipal budget and was placed under the supervision of a state monitor.
Against this troubled backdrop, however, the city nonetheless paid more than $7.3 million in cash to retiring employees in exchange for accrued leave between 2004 and 2009, pursuant to the terms of city personnel policies and negotiated contracts. The total payout was about evenly divided between unused vacation time and so-called “terminal” leave. Under terms of the city’s personnel policies and negotiated contracts, terminal leave in Hoboken essentially consists of bonus leave days granted to all categories of municipal employees based on length of service. Police, fire and civilian supervisory personnel are awarded five days for every year of service. Rank-and-file workers, meanwhile, qualify for three days per year of service, depending on their dates of hire. At retirement, employees are permitted to cash in this special bank of terminal leave, along with varying amounts of unused accumulated vacation time defined by their various contracts. The only general caveat is that the combined sum of both the terminal and vacation leave redemptions cannot exceed the equivalent of one year’s salary.
During the five-year period referenced above, retiring Hoboken employees collected $3.87 million worth of terminal leave, including individual payments as high as $97,000, and $3.14 million in accumulated vacation leave. In numerous individual instances, the combined lump-sum payout was identical to or within several thousands of dollars of the recipient’s last annual salary.
The one notable exception to the maximum-payout rule occurred in the case of Carmen LaBruno, Hoboken’s former police chief. LaBruno agreed to retire in 2008 under the terms of a separation agreement in which the city awarded him a lump sum of $350,000, including $125,000 in accrued unused vacation leave, $150,000 in terminal leave and $75,000 in unused accumulated compensatory time. A confidentiality clause in the agreement cloaks this information from the general public. LaBruno’s final salary as Police Chief was $210,794.
Also, in a strange anomaly, Hoboken police and fire personnel, in addition to lump-sum leave redemptions, are entitled by contract to cash stipends at retirement – $2,000 for rank-and-file police officers who retire with less than 28 years of service and $2,000 for firefighters with less than 30 years. Police superiors receive the $2,000 stipend if they retire on January 1 of any given year, plus $240 if they are members of the Superior Officers Association. Beyond retirement payouts for terminal and unused vacation leave, uniformed and civilian employees in Hoboken routinely receive longevity raises ranging from 2 percent to as
much as 18 percent per year on top of regular salary adjustments. Depending on the employee group, they also qualify variously for a mix of special leave benefits, including days off as an incentive for not taking sick leave, time off for donating blood and personal days off for private events, such as weddings and baptisms.
Editor's note: Feel free to make yor comments below ◦
