Some state employees take cash over vacation

Rather than hitting the road or the beach, nearly 600 state employees opted to take cash instead of vacation time.

Employees in 27 state agencies received vacation payouts at the end of June totaling $814,000. Two of the state's largest departments, Corrections and Human Services, did not allow employees to cash out vacation - a decision criticized by a union official.

'They would rather have people max out and lose vacation accrual,” said Danny Homan, AFSCME Iowa Council 61 president.

Within participating agencies, workers with at least four weeks of banked vacation by June 1 were allowed to cash in up to 40 hours, depending on the department. Nearly half of the 598 employees who took the payout are represented under union contracts.

The Iowa Department of Public Safety had the highest number of employees who chose the payout, with 163 people for a total cost of $133,587. The Iowa Veterans Home had the next highest, with 96 employees paid $120,026 for unused vacation.

'There are a lot of people who lose vacation, so when something like this comes up, you take advantage of it,” said Sgt. Scott Bright, who took the maximum payout of 20 hours allowed by the 900-employee Public Safety department.

Bright, who has been with the state for 24 years, said he accrues one vacation day with each paycheck. The time piles up because he often can't take off because of various projects. A public information officer for the Iowa State Patrol, Bright is in charge of RAGBRAI traffic control and coordinates the agency's booth at the Iowa State Fair.

Vacation caps vary depending on years of service. Bright can accrue up to 440 hours, or about 11 weeks, before he stops receiving additional time off, he said.

The Iowa Department of Revenue, which had 53 of 124 eligible employees take the payout, has an average length of service of 16.5 years, spokeswoman Victoria Daniels said. People who have been with the state for that long get 160 hours, or four weeks, of vacation a year.

R and R becoming increasingly rare

The average American used only half of his or her vacation time in the preceding year, according to a March survey of 2,000 adults by Glassdoor, a California-based career website. Fifteen percent of respondents said they used no vacation at all.

The top reason people gave for not taking vacation was the belief no one else could do their job, Glassdoor reported.

'There's a fair amount of data that employees are more productive and happier when they take vacation,” said Caleb Hunter, spokesman for the Department of Administrative Services (DAS), which serves as the state's Human Resources department.

DAS didn't offer the payout to its 212 full-time employees because of budget constraints, Hunter said. Although the state is required to pay employees' vacation time, agencies bank on not having to pay that all at once.

Human Services, which has 5,000 employees, and Corrections, with 2,708, also chose not to participate in the payout because of the potential cost.

The Corrections Department had an average number of earned vacation days per employee of 19.94 in fiscal 2013 and an average number of vacation days taken of 19.27, spokesman Fred Scaletta said.

Several state agencies saw benefit in paying out unused vacation.

'Vacation time is an accrued liability that will have to be paid whether now or in the future,” Daniels said. 'From a business perspective it makes sense to pay down some of that liability now at a presumably lower rate.”

Daniels doesn't think the payout is a result of employees not being able to take vacation because of understaffing. Of 8,757 Revenue Department vacation requests in fiscal 2013, only four were denied, she said.