How South Orange Stacks Up in Vacation/Sick Time Owed

Governor Chris Christie and a bipartisan group of 234 mayors from around the state are out to end payouts for accumulated sick and vacation time for public employees.

Eleven of those mayors joined Christie today at where they called for the state legislature to pass sick and vacation pay reform. Currently, public workers can accumulate sick days and vacation days and collect payment for them when they retire. The legislature has passed a bill that would cap future payouts at $15,000. However, the governor's goal is to eliminate the retirement payouts completely.

Christie said the payouts amount to “a going-away present to public employees who had the great good fortune of not being sick.” Liabilities for unused sick and vacation day benefits total more than $825 million statewide.

“Every tax dollar that’s used to cash out unused sick and vacation days is a dollar that should be going to limit a tax increase and be sent right back to the taxpayer,” Christie said. "The only way to deal with property taxes is to lessen the amount we spend."

So how much are public employees accruing town to town?

Earlier today, the NJ Department of Community Affairs made available a spreadsheet revealing what municipalities owe workers in accrued sick and vacation time.

The spreadsheet breaks down that cost per average household. (Accumulated absence is shown, but is not broken down separately for sick and vacation time.)

In some towns, the accrued time is really adding up. Take Alpine Borough in Bergen County, for example, where the average household cost is $1,169.46 for accrued sick and vacation time for municipal employees.

Conversely, the average cost per household in South Orange is lower, but still a significant $445.33.  South Orange’s total amount of accumulated absence is $2,177,407.

Maplewood’s value of accumulated unpaid time to the average home is a modest $41.09 (with $315,182.32 in accumulated absence).  Other Essex County towns range from Fairfield at $11.68 ($68,643.64 in accumulated absence) to Newark with $770.97 ($46,091,556 in accumulated absence). Millburn is at $196.29 ($1,487,986 in accumulated absence). West Orange comes in with $623.80 ($10,273,706 in accumulated absence). The statewide average value to average home is $250.09.

Teaneck Patch Editor Noah Cohen in Teaneck contributed to this report.