But Fenty administration still won’t pay up
The Fenty administration isn’t budging on its refusal to pay retirement awards due to four former city employees, despite emergency D.C. Council action clarifying that the money can be released and this week’s revelation that the executive branch has awarded more than $500,000 in performance bonuses since Oct. 1.
Council members voted again Tuesday to make clear that Early Out/Easy Out retirement awards did no fall under the umbrella of performance bonuses, which they banned in fiscal 2010. Under the program, retirees are paid up to $25,000 on the condition that they not return to government service for at least five years.
Attorney General Peter Nickles and the Department of Human Resources read the council’s prohibition of performance bonuses to mean those retirement awards could not be paid. While DCHR processed 58 retirement applications prior to Oct. 15, the four at issue were received too late.
“I think [Nickles] was wrong from the beginning, and this persistence in questioning the council’s legislative intent leaves me skeptical of his intentions,” said Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh, chairwoman of the government operations committee.
But Cheh said her priority was to make things right for the four former city employees, so “if I have to jump through some strange hoops he’s erected, I’ll do it.” The four retirees should receive their money soon, Cheh said.
The council first acted Dec. 2 to clarify that retirement payments were not covered under the bonus ban. But Nickles responded, in a Dec. 10 letter to Cheh and Council Chairman Vincent Gray, that “we are still left with language that continues to prohibit the payment of the additional retirement awards in fiscal year 2010.”
Retirement awards “are included under special awards pay and the Retirement Bill now expressly prohibits the payment of awards in that subcategory,” Nickles wrote.
Two days after the Nickles letter was delivered, The Examiner reported that Mayor Adrian Fenty had doled out $565,000 in bonuses since Oct. 1, the first day of fiscal 2010, and $15 million since 2007.
Many of the most recent awards went to staff in the Office the Attorney General. Nickles has explained that the bonuses were written into contracts and could not be avoided.
Those rewards, Gray said Tuesday, are “unconscionable.” But, he added, “We’ll do whatever it takes” to ensure the four retirees are paid.
