In the wake of criticism surrounding the accumulated sick leave credit Wisconsin politicians have stacked up, several pieces of legislation have been drafted to remedy the problem and will be debated in the next session.
The accumulated sum of sick leave benefits currently held by members of the senate and assembly is $3,241,094, according to state records.
Assembly Bill 31 is scheduled for the Committee on Labor and Industry this Wednesday. AB 31, along with two other pieces of legislation including a Senate version, call for an end to the current system where accumulated sick leave is carried over from year to year, allowing the benefits to add up to thousands.
While all pieces of legislation address these staggering numbers, the main discrepancy is who gets covered.
According to a legislative assistant to state Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, ""there are often very similar bills floating around, but to make a long story short, the Senate version just added a couple more restrictions on who would be able to claim the sick leave.""
Mike Mikalsen, research assistant for state Rep. Stephen Nass, R-Whitewater, said Nass, who is the chair of the Colleges and Universities Committee, supports these bills and may look to expand similar restrictions on other professions.
In the future, Mikalsen said an effort should be made to expand the bills to include non-elected government officials, but that this expansion is not the priority.
""The first issue is to deal with elected officials and the fact that there's no use for them to get sick leave, because frankly, they get paid whether or not they show up for work,"" Mikalsen said.
In October 2006, a state audit of the UW System was conducted and the results showed that UW employees had accrued thousands of dollars in sick leave benefits.
Currently UW employees, like state employees, can convert unused sick leave into post-retirement health insurance coverage.
Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, places the emphasis not on who gets covered by the legislature, but simply on the fact that lawmakers need to know the rules and follow them.
""The key here"" said Heck, ""is that legislators need to behave in the same way that all state employees are supposed to behave including UW personnel with regard to
sick leave. If you're sick you need to report it.""
Heck said he believes that since there are legislators who have not abused the system, no one should be punished because of the issue.
""Let's keep it in place and reform it so that it works the way it's supposed to work and require the same thing of all state employees so everyone's playing by the same rules,"" Heck said.
