Not working didn’t stop one government employee from getting paid nearly $200,000
Topline: A California state employee recently took one of the longest paid vacations in history.
The unnamed worker stayed on paid leave for over two years after announcing his plan to retire and earned $171,446 in illegitimate salary before his supervisors finally noticed the mistake, according to a state audit released Dec. 12.
Key facts: The unnamed employee of the California Air Resources Board — the state agency tasked with fighting air pollution and climate change — planned to retire in July 2022 but wanted to use up his vacation time first. The agency allows its workers to take up to 180 days of paid vacation before retiring, if they have enough days saved up.
The employee’s vacation days should have run out in June 2023, if California’s payroll system were accurate. It was not.
An agency “reorganization” from 2019 meant the employee’s time off had been recorded incorrectly for years, unbeknownst to his supervisors. The state controller’s office had already told the board about the error in 2022, but the staffer who received the message left his job before fixing the error, according to the audit.
Once June 2023 passed, the employee kept submitting timesheets with more paid leave. He told the state auditor he had “not noticed any problems with his leave balances and assumed they were accurate.”
It wasn’t until the employee finally decided to retire for good in September 2024 that his supervisors noticed something was amiss. They reviewed his paysheets and determined he had received an overpayment of $124,705.
That number was yet another mistake, according to the state auditor. The employee had actually been overpaid $171,446. The board was going to allow him to keep money he earned for professional development leave and 428 hours in sick leave, even though the employee never claimed that he was sick or attended professional development.
The audit states that the board made an “attempt” to recover the overpayment, but it is unclear whether it was actually repaid.
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Summary: Most office workers would love to take a two-year paid vacation, but that is simply not in the cards — with the exception of public employees.
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