Following the release of a slew of numbers documenting the millions of dollars state politicians have accrued in unclaimed sick leave days, one lawmaker claimed leave from a previous year while another vowed to ""end this charade.""
State Rep. Terese Berceau, D- Madison, said after she became aware of the policy, she subtracted four days from 2005, in which she did not claim sick leave following a heart surgery.
""They did allow me to subtract [the days], so that is taken care of,"" she said. ""Now I guess the issue they are going to be reviewing is everybody's absences to see whether they were sick, because we really didn't have a reporting mechanism.""
Berceau said it is difficult to report sick leave because lawmakers did not have forums, time sheets or enough information on the sick leave policy.
""I was not trying to cheat the system after heart surgery. I honestly did not remember that we had sick leave because we don't have vacation,"" she said.
""Do people really think that after having a cancer, where I showed up every day, and then after having surprise heart surgery because of my cancer, that it was top on my agenda to figure out how I could get away with four days of sick leave, that I didn't even know I had?""
While the numbers released have caused Berceau to retroactively claim sick days, Rep. Sheldon Wasserman, D-Milwaukee, said the state should consider new policies.
It makes ""no sense"" to give sick leave to state politicians because legislators receive no pay cuts in their salary when missing work due to sickness, he said in a statement.
""The last thing we should be doing is adding to the state bureaucracy by paying someone to set up a meaningless system to keep better track of when a legislator claims to be sick. It's time to end this charade,"" he said.
According to numbers obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Wasserman has $20,339 saved up in sick leave benefits.
A list of numbers for all state politicians currently in office was released showing their benefits from sick days.
If all the members in both the state Senate and the Assembly were to retire today the state would have to pay $3,241,094. The Senate's sick day benefits would total $1,270,402, slightly lower than the Assembly's $1,970,692.
Other lawmakers with big benefits stashed include Gov. Jim Doyle with $169,505 and Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley with $447,557. Former Gov. Tommy Thompson collected $290,797.
With recent coverage of the sick leave days, Berceau said the media is making the policy seem like a scandal.
""Nobody seems to care about other things that are going on that are substantive,"" she said.
