O.C. Cuts Its Paid Leave Expenses

Orange County officials, criticized for allowing suspended workers to linger on paid leave for months at a time, have reduced amounts paid in such cases by more than 40%.

The reduction over the last 18 months came after strong criticism from the Board of Supervisors, which called long paid leaves a waste of taxpayer dollars and unfair to workers who must wait anxiously to learn their fate.

It isn’t uncommon during investigations of alleged misconduct for government agencies to suspend workers with pay, but several Orange County workers spent six months or longer on the payroll before the county decided whether to discipline them.

Shelley Carlucci, Orange County’s interim chief of employee relations, said the county had managed to reduce the time employees spent on paid leave by scrutinizing the cases more closely.

“Sometimes just a call to the department saying, ‘What is the status of the investigation?’ will get them going,” Carlucci said. “I also think there’s heightened awareness. We did a little education with the departments.”

Orange County spent $922,000 on salary for suspended workers in the 2002-03 fiscal year. That dropped to $544,000 the following fiscal year. In the first six months of the current fiscal year, the county has paid $236,000.

“I’m pleased. When I got onto this, we were running at $1 million per year. That’s almost a 50% reduction,” said Supervisor Bill Campbell, who called for a review of paid leaves in 2003. “It’s taxpayers’ money that we’re spending to have somebody sitting at home.... It’s equally unfair to the employees to have them hanging out there. You should resolve the issue quickly and either put them back to work or terminate them.”

The issue is hardly unique to Orange County. Workers in six large counties -- Los Angeles, Orange, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego and Santa Clara -- were paid more than $27.2 million while suspended from work from 1999 to 2003, according to a Times analysis.

Two cases in the Orange County district attorney’s office underscored the problem. One worker, an investigator, was suspended for more than a year before he was allowed to return to work.

Another was suspended for more than six months amid questions about his handling of some cases.

The cost to his department was about $75,000 in salary and benefits. The decision on his punishment: five days off without pay.

Now, all departments must report every three months about how long employees have been on paid leave and how much the workers have been paid.

“That’s a classic business statement,” Campbell said. If you measure something, “people will perform better against that measurement. Now, the department heads know somebody is looking at how they’re doing.”