Kudos to Cary Councilman Erv Portman, who is taking heat from the N.C. Police Benevolent Association over his concerns about the cost to taxpayers of allowing town employees to give vacation time to a fellow employee. Portman describes the intent of the policy as honorable but says it will increase costs and it’s his job to ride herd over costs. From the Cary News comes this exchange of views between Portman and John Midgette of the police group. (emphasis is mine)
“What I will always object to is council members at the table writing ordinances and policies themselves without any fact or knowledge about the cost and the financial impact,” Portman said.
Midgette says that employees have a right to share earned vacation time.
“Vacation is a benefit that is theirs to give, not for Mr. Portman to give away,” he said. “Vacation is accrued over time, and that is your time.”
Portman says that there is an obvious financial cost to the policy.
“When a public service employee’s truck needs to be on the road to do whatever it is they’re doing, and they’re sick and they have been paid all of that time to be sick and their vacation and everything else, they have exhausted their benefit plan,” Portman said. “To choose to open it up again and draft it from someone else’s account has a cost that week to the town that it would not have otherwise incurred.”
Portman added: “Hiring a temporary employee to do that job has a cash cost because the town is now paying the temporary employee and the employee that is sick beyond their benefit plan.”
These days we don’t seem many demonstrations of concern about the costs to the folks paying the freight, no matter how honorable a policy is or isn’t.
