The agreement was put in place with a previous city management administration but required no council approval as an employment matter. <\/p>\n
AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Former Austin interim police chief Robin Henderson received a city payout of more than $766,000 in January through an agreement with officials to serve in an acting capacity for a year between 2023 and 2024, documents show.<\/p>\n
The amount of the payment was unusual among departing police officers and executives, but officials said they wanted to provide incentives to Henderson to accept the position during a time of upheaval and unprecedented attrition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A five-page contract stipulates all payout monies Henderson would receive when she retired after serving as interim chief. Henderson left the department in January after a distinguished nearly 29-year career.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The agreement was put in place with a previous city management administration but required no council approval as an employment matter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It raised her pay to match the $250,000 salary of former Police Chief Joe Chacon \u2013 but it also gave thousands of dollars in stipends to help Henderson recover lost wages when a contract between the city and police officers lapsed.<\/p>\n
Henderson\u2019s position as chief of staff was not included when the city council approved a measure in 2023 that replenished most officer\u2019s pay.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But stipend pay is not eligible for contributions to the Austin Police Retirement System. Instead, under the deal, the city agreed to give Henderson the amount she would have contributed, plus projections of how the money would accrue over time, equaling about $375,000 \u2013 which was set to be paid out when she retired.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a perk, the city also agreed \u2013 upon Henderson\u2019s retirement \u2013 to pay her 800 hours of unused sick time, on top of the 1,700 hours she was already set to receive through the city\u2019s contract with police officers. That total combined is $336,000.<\/p>\n
And finally \u2013 amid a dispute about her compensation \u2013 the city gave Henderson an additional $55,000.<\/p>\n
Add that all up \u2013 and it comes out to her payout of $766,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The agreement was put in place with a previous city management administration but required no council approval as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-253438","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-headlines","10":"tag-austin-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}