Thursday, August 28, 2008

Vernon's sister City in action: Modesto's Council, manager take healthy look at benefits

MODESTO BEE Aug 27

The Modesto City Council and its new city manager are taking a hard look at management leave and monthly vehicle allowances, two employee benefits that have mushroomed in scope and cost. While this evaluation was prompted by the city's current budget crunch, it is worthwhile review at any time.

The two key issues:

Vehicle allowance: About 40 managers receive monthly vehicle allowances ranging from $100 to $500 each, regardless of how much they drive their personal car for city business.

Management leave: About 280 employees receive paid time off, known as management leave, as an acknowledgment of the extra hours they put it at night meetings and on weekends. The leave ranges from 20 to 80 hours per year. Employees are allowed to either take the time off or cash out all or part of the unused time. This benefit costs the city almost $730,000 a year.

Councilwomen Janice Keating and Kristin Olsen raised questions about the leave during budget deliberations earlier this year. Monday, at the council's Finance Committee meeting, City Manager Greg Nyhoff made some recommendations. For 2008-09, the city has reduced by three the number of mid-level manager positions designated to receive a vehicle allowance of $100 to $200 per month. Furthermore, Nyhoff is asking that the 14 managers still receiving the allowance track their business-related mileage for six months so that it can be determined whether they should receive a flat amount or reimbursement per mile driven. This is a good first step. Beyond that, the council needs to review the $300 to $500 vehicle allowances paid to the city manager, city attorney, city clerk, department directors and deputy directors. Modesto should offer compensation packages that are competitive with private business and other public agencies, but it should not pay vehicle allowances to employees who, in fact, seldom need to use their cars for city business.

The city is providing management leave to about 70 employees who also get overtime for extra hours. That double-dipping should go away, and Nyhoff proposes to address that in negotiations with the Modesto Confidential and Management Association. To its credit, the association has shown its willingness to talk on the issue. For the other 200-plus employees receiving management leave, Nyhoff suggests the long-term approach should be to eliminate the cash-out option and to cap leave at 40 hours a year. Those seem like reasonable targets.

Because of existing contracts and the need for the city to be competitive in its compensation packages, council members cannot unilaterally eliminate management leave or vehicle allowances. Nor should they want to. There's no indication of foul play or overt abuse of these benefits by city workers. Rather, they've simply become expectations and something that isn't always counted with the more traditional compensation elements -- pay, health benefits and pensions. The job of the council and the city manager is to keep a firm rein on all benefits, to make them fair but not lavish and to not let them bloat into uncontrollable expenses for the city. The discussion at Monday's Finance Committee meeting suggests the city is moving in the right direction. The Finance Committee also agreed that the city offer a voluntary unpaid furlough program, leaving on the table the possibility of a mandatory time off without pay depending on the budget outlook. That's another sensible approach.

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