The Courant is reporting that the State Supreme Court has upheld an appellate court ruling that unused vacation pay could not be tacked onto the last year of an employees earnings. Pension payouts are determined by the salary earned during the top 3 highest paid years.
The case was brought by two retired assistant attorneys general - Donald Longley and Richard K. Greenberg - who had challenged the decision by the state Employees Retirement Commission not to factor into their pension equation the dollar value of their accrued, unused vacation pay. Both lawyers had received lump sum payments for that accrued time - $53,183 in Longley’s case and $42,934 in Greenberg’s case.
Because each had worked for the state for 33 years and three months, and based on pensions being calculated on the average of a state employee’s top three salaried years, both men stood to gain roughly $9,000 per year in pension funds if the value of the accrued vacation time had been credited. Over the course of 25 years, they would have received a total of $225,000 each if they had prevailed on appeal.
“We think it is highly unlikely that the legislature intended to bestow a substantial annual windfall on them for the duration of their retirement - in essence, a lifetime annuity - merely because they chose to stockpile their vacation time rather than to use it,” Justice Richard N. Palmer wrote. “This result penalizes workers who use their vacation days and rewards those who do not.”
The commission had ruled, and the Supreme Court agreed, that the lump sum vacation pay-out could not be added on to the last year’s salary because vacation pay represents time, and would exceed the statutory definition of a year as being 12 months of service and no more. State employees may accrue up to 120 days of vacation time. Longley had accrued the maximum; Greenberg had banked 97 days.
source: The Courant, Supreme Court Rules On Unused Vacation: Reversing Appellate Court Decision, High Court Says State Employees Can’t Factor Stockpiled Vacation Time Into Pension Calculations, By LYNNE TUOHY, September 27, 2007
