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'Pretend' retirement was inappropriateBy JEFF WEBB
© St. Petersburg Times, The Hernando County School Board voted last week to allow former superintendent John Sanders to retract, rewrite and resubmit his resignation in order to collect $15,000 in unused sick leave. It was a generous going-away gift for Sanders, who quit his job here after deciding he'd rather make $165,000 a year as superintendent of the Lee County School District. After Sanders landed that job, he submitted his resignation here. That was appropriate because that's exactly what he did: resign to take another job. Or, as board member Sandra Nicholson accurately put it, he "broke his contract and moved out." But later Sanders learned that if he had submitted a letter to the board that claimed he was retiring, not resigning, he could cash in a portion of his unused sick leave. He was entitled to 35 percent of the accumulated sick days, which equated to about $15,000. (If my math is correct, which it occasionally is, that means Sanders' payout would have been $42,857 if he had been eligible to collect 100 percent of his unused sick leave. But, because he had worked in Florida for only six years, he was eligible for only 35 percent of what he actually banked.) Still, it was a sweet deal. The board was not legally obliged to allow Sanders, 65, to change his resignation to a retirement notice. Board member Gail Coleman agreed with Nicholson on that point, and both were right on with their objections. But the majority -- composed of members Jim Malcolm, Robert Wiggins and John Druzbick -- said that they thought Sanders deserved it and that approving his request was in keeping with the district's policy. Other people do it, too, Wiggins reasoned, calling it a "technicality." (Advice to Wiggins: Taxpayers don't like public servants who invoke a "technicality" and then hold their hand out for money.) At any rate, if others are doing it, the board should put a stop to it. If you retire, you retire. If you resign, you resign. That's a reasonably simple and concise concept to understand. People in the private sector grasp it every day. If the board's policy doesn't clearly make that distinction, it should. More to the point, it may be time for the School Board, the County Commission and the whole state government to re-examine the purpose of sick days. Too many employees use sick days as a financial crutch for when they retire. Granted, most government employees don't make a whole lot of money; so it's hard to blame them for squeezing a few extra bucks out of a low-paying system. But for people at the other end of the pay scale, such as Sanders, it makes sense for the School Board or any other governing authority to protect against such big payouts. Maybe there should be a sick-day cap for employees who make in excess of, say, $50,000. Or perhaps all employees should be compensated every year for sick days they did not use, instead of being allowed to let them pile up. That still gives the employees an incentive to not take time off work unless they're really sick, but it also helps the School Board avoid unexpected and unwieldly lump-sum payouts. But, I digress from my original point, which is that the School Board played loose with your money. Don't get me wrong. I don't fault Sanders for bettering himself by taking a much higher-paying job. I said so in print, and again to his face when I bid him farewell. But let's recap the situation. He decided to pursue the Lee County job, and when he wasn't that board's first choice, he said he was no longer interested in the job and would stay in Hernando County. Then, Lee County's first choice turned it down, and Sanders retreated from his previous statement and threw his hat back into the ring. All this happened at the beginning of the school year and at a time when budgeting and construction projects needed an experienced overseer. Sanders finally took the higher-paying job and gave the board his notice. Then, four weeks later, he asked the board to pretend he was retiring, not resigning. Given those circumstances, I wonder if the three board members would have been so patient and generous if Sanders was the CEO of their private business and the money was coming out of their pockets. I'll wager not.
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From today's Hernando Times |
