(The Center Square)\u2014Eight retired\u00a0Pittsburgh public-safety workers received more than $60,000 last year in taxpayer-funded payouts\u00a0for unused leave, according to an investigation by The Center Square.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In all, 17 municipal retirees in the Steel City cashed\u00a0out more than $40,000 from unused leave for sickness, vacation, or personal reasons. All worked\u00a0in either the police or fire bureaus.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lawrence Mercurio, a police commander, received the most\u2014$84,308. Christopher Ragland, an assistant police chief and acting chief of polic<\/a>e, earned $82,422, while James McGee, a police detective, made $68,011. Two\u00a0fire battalion chiefs, including Bernard Mohan, cashed out roughly $63,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n The payouts amounted to roughly\u00a0half to three-quarters of each man\u2019s annual salary last year<\/a>. Mercurio\u2019s base pay was $141,876; Ragland\u2019s was $150,384; McGee\u2019s was $90,972; and Mohan\u2019s $117,826.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The findings highlight how\u00a0Pittsburgh\u2019s public-safety unions kept unusually generous leave protections even after the city enacted<\/a> sweeping<\/a> fiscal reforms in 2004<\/a>. City leaders sought to head off a looming\u00a0fiscal crisis by\u00a0trimming\u00a0municipal spending, including limiting cash-outs for leave. Yet public-safety workers retained\u00a0more generous protections than\u00a0many\u00a0civilian workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Steven G. Craig, a professor of economics at the University of Houston who studies urban economies and local governments, said that while he could not comment on the specifics of Pittsburgh\u2019s finances, he said benefits like cash outs increase taxes and can prevent cities from being affordable.<\/p>\n “City workers\u2019 wages can\u2019t be too much above or below the market rate,\u201d Craig said in an interview with The Center Square. \u201cWhat you get is people in the city say the cops should get paid well because they\u2019re doing a great job, but the people unrepresented in the discussion are people who want to move to the city, like young people or entrepreneurs who want to start a business there, but the extra $100 they pay in taxes prevents them from moving.”<\/p>\n Craig added,\u00a0“You get a doughnut hole effect in which the center city hollows out while the suburbs grow. But that\u2019s not good for the suburbs either because their economies depend on the center city.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The City Controller\u2019s office did not respond to a voicemail for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Public safety workers on top<\/p>\n Pittsburgh provided payouts worth $2.3 million to 201 municipal employees last year, according to the City Controller, who responded to a request of records from The Center Square under Pennsylvania\u2019s right-to-know law. Roughly 5% of the city\u2019s approximately 4,000 workers received a payout for unused leave. Each worker cashed out $10,401 on average.\u00a0<\/p>\n Thirty-four employees received $20,000 or more. All\u00a0but one was a public safety employee. The lone civilian employee was Thomas Kenitz, an accountant for the City Controller.\u00a0<\/p>\n Like their private-sector counterparts, Pittsburgh municipal workers receive allotted days off for illness, vacation, or personal reasons each year. Historically, many workers could bank or roll over unused leave for future use or retirement payouts.\u00a0<\/p>\n Most private businesses cap the amount of sick and vacation leave that can be rolled over, preventing large payouts when an employee retires after a long time with the business. Often governments do not cap the rollovers or set substantially more generous limits than private businesses.<\/p>\n But Pittsburgh’s finances\u00a0hit a low point in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n The city was projected to end 2004 with a debt of $34.3 million, and the figure was expected to grow to $100 million by 2008. To\u00a0curb the debt, city leaders filed<\/a> to be designated as a “financially distressed municipality.” With the help of state officials, they enacted a sweeping reform package that included cuts to city services and higher taxes.<\/p>\n Among the measures the city adopted was a general freeze on municipal workers banking unused sick leave after June 30, 2004.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet the reforms permitted more generous systems for workers operating under a collective bargaining agreement, including police, firefighters, and paramedics.<\/p>\n Vacation leave is capped at 200 hours at retirement. Firefighters are permitted to keep 70 percent of their unused sick leave. Police officers, firefighters, and paramedics often work holidays, overnight shifts, and extended schedules that can make it difficult to use accrued leave during their careers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ralph Sicuro, president of Pi<\/a>ttsburgh Firefighters Local #1<\/a> Board of Directors, said Pittsburgh\u00a0benefits from the 70-percent provision but it hurts employees.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s sick leave I\u2019ve earned, and\u00a0I\u2019m losing 30 percent,\u201d Sicuro said in an interview. \u201cThis helps the city.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(The Center Square)\u2014Eight retired\u00a0Pittsburgh public-safety workers received more than $60,000 last year in taxpayer-funded payouts\u00a0for unused leave, according…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1930,693,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-195571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-accountability","tag-investigations","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}