District officials are scrambling to delay a little-noticed administrative change made this year that has the potential to bring government operations to a crawl.
Thanks to a reduction in the number of vacation hours the city’s more than 30,000 employees can carry over into the next year, some longtime workers who have racked up several weeks of unused vacation in their tenure are looking to burn many of those days before they lose them in 2013, according to city staffers. Meanwhile, their supervisors are crunching the numbers and shuffling schedules to figure out how much overtime they’ll need pay others to cover those hours.
The result could cost the city money and make daily operations a major challenge, said Alex McCray, spokesman for the Department of Human Resources, which has flagged the issue.
“Repealing the provision on annual leave could prevent service disruptions and relieve pressure on employees to use their excess leave by the end of the year,” McCray said.
The scramble would also apply to public safety employees, even though they have a separate contract with the city. Police union President Kris Baumann said the provision “endangered” public safety. The change reduces the number of days staffers can carry over by two workweeks — from 30 days, or six weeks, to 20 days, or four weeks.
“I think the city would have enormous operational problems during the last couple of months of the year,” he said, adding, “No one’s planned for this.”
On Tuesday, Ward 3 D.C. Councilwoman Mary Cheh, who sponsored the original personnel legislation, and Ward 4 Councilwoman Muriel Bowser are planning to introduce emergency legislation that would delay implementation by one year. In their memo to colleagues, obtained by The Washington Examiner, they noted the reduction of hours could “violate the terms of several collective bargaining agreements” and the potential financial impact from increased overtime spending needed to be assessed.
Meanwhile, Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans and at-large Councilman Phil Mendelson are working on repealing the policy change altogether by inserting a reversal into the 2013 budget on Tuesday, according to Mendelson Chief of Staff Denise Tolliver.
The provision officials are now rushing to fix came as part of a personnel hiring and rules overhaul passed by the council in January.
The change went unnoticed until the Human Resources Department flagged it in a memo to agency heads this month, noting it was working with legislators on delaying the implementation because of the potential “impact on government operations, service delivery and employees.”
