When the Legislature passed laws in 2007 and 2010 designed to save taxpayers money by limiting sick leave cash-outs for local public employees, it did not explicitly add an enforcement mechanism.
And that may be one of the reasons why the Office of the State Comptroller found that nearly all of 60 municipalities examined are violating at least one provision of those laws, at a cost to taxpayers that could exceed tens of millions of dollars over time. The amount is not surprising, given an NJ Spotlight News analysis of state Department of Community Affairs data found the current value of accumulated leave time owed to municipal employees alone totaled $934 million last year, not including county and school employees.
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Marc Pfeiffer, deputy director of the Department of Community Affairs’ Division of Local Government Services when both laws were enacted and now assistant director of Rutgers University’s Bloustein Local Government Research Center, said it’s not clear that all the practices cited in the report are illegal.
