The District would owe 180 employees nearly $4.5 million in severance pay if Mayor-elect Adrian Fenty were to clean house and discharge all of Mayor Anthony Williams’ top brass.
Fenty is unlikely to let everyone go. But under District policy, top executive and excepted service employees — those who serve at the pleasure of the mayor — are due up to 12 weeks of “separation pay” once their time with the government expires, if they’re not retained by the next administration.
“It’s going to be within historical standards of jurisdictions like ours in the kind of politicalcontext we’re talking about,” Williams said during a recent news conference. “Nobody’s getting a golden parachute or something.”
Of the 180 employees who are eligible for separation pay once Williams leaves office, 107 earn more than $100,000 a year, according to information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
Only one earns less than $50,000 — a staff assistant in the Office of Neighborhood Action — and six earn less than $70,000.
The Executive Office of the Mayor, where just about everyone is likely to be replaced with Fenty’s people, would owe the most, $386,883 to 19 employees, including Williams’ chief of staff, director of operations and director of community affairs.
The Department of Health follows close behind, with $353,543 to 12 employees, all but one of whom earn more than $110,000 a year.
Fourteen staff in the Office of the Inspector General could leave with $340,126, while employees in the Office of the City Administrator, who are almost certain to be supplanted, would collect $302,510 total.
Separation pay is nothing new for the District government — the law was adopted in 1978 — though 12 weeks severance is considered generous for local governments.
The one executive employee who gets nil? The mayor himself.
“I don’t get a damn thing,” Williams told reporters, “except your thanks.”
