Accrued Leave Fund: Our county commissioners are treating this fund the same way the Federal government balances its budget: pushing what's owed to the future. I refer to this as the "Scarlett O'Hara approach" to public policy.
On yesterday's agenda the commissioners approved the revision of the county personnel policy by discontinuing the payment of unused sick leave for employees who are going off the rolls. This policy change will not apply to current employees but will apply to non-union employees hired after April 13. At this time non-union employees account for less than 25% of total county staffing. The cows are out of the barn and our commissioners are swatting at flies by just revising the county's personnel policy.
Lynda Ring Erickson did not want to allow my questions about how the BOCC is ignoring Mason County Resolution 70-04 which established a target schedule for fully funding this liability which for Dec 31, 2009 came to $3.3M of which $2.3M is for Current Expense or General Fund employees. Since Dec 2008 this unfunded liability has increased by $800K. We're heading in the wrong direction.
The target schedule which the commissioners continue to ignore requires 2010 Accrued Leave Fund to be funded at 75% of what we owed employees at the end of 2008. Instead of the mere $355K provided by the commissioners in the 2010 budget, the target schedule would have this account funded at $1.2M. Quite a difference there.
At the end of March with one fourth of the year lapsed, we'd already spent more than one third of the money set aside for 2010. It appears that just looking at this on a straight line basis, the $355K amount budgeted will not be enough to cover money owed to terminated employees for this year.
It's not hard to figure out why Lynda Ring Erickson didn't want to talk about this problem yesterday. That's what Scarlett O'Hara would have done also.
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