Payroll "leap year" causes trouble
ZANESVILLE - A rare payroll anomaly has played a role in a recent shuffling of funds among county departments to reimburse retiring workers for unused days off.
The Muskingum County commissioners are calling this occurrence a "leap year" of sorts, meaning that county workers, who are normally paid every two weeks for a total of 26 paychecks, will be receive an additional 27th biweekly paycheck for 2015.
"I've been here almost eight years, and this has never happened before," county commissioner Jarry Lavy said. "It's a rare thing for sure."
It all comes down to the way the calendar fell this year, Lavy said. A normal year has 26 14-day pay periods, for 364 days; the additional day (or two days in leap years) rolls over into the following year. But in 2015, the dates aligned so that the two weeks of extra days accumulated over the course of the last 11 years fell within the 2015 calendar.
That means that an additional $122,341 in employee costs had to be added to the 2015 payroll budget for people working under the commissioners alone; the number for all county employees is more than 16 times that figure, according to the commissioners' estimates.
Although the commissioners took this additional pay period into account back in January, when the county budget was finalized, there was no way to predict when certain workers will retire. That creates problems at the end of the year when the final payroll budgets are reviewed because retiring workers are afforded the opportunity to be reimbursed for unused vacation and sick days.
And those reimbursements are not cheap. According to the commissioners, a typical reimbursement for a retiring county worker will amount to more than $27,000.
"For someone who has worked with the county for more than three decades, those days add up," Commissioner Jim Porter said.
On Monday, the commissioners approved the transfer of about $17,200 to the County Court of Common Pleas to make up for the retiree reimbursements. An additional $3,500 was taken from the Clerk of Courts title fund, which is the accumulated funds from title fees on cars in Muskingum, to make up for worker costs.
"We're expecting to see other departments come forward with similar issues," Porter said.
The commissioners have yet to determine whether the additional costs will be recouped in 2016 — and whether county departments will see a dip in funds to accommodate the losses — although both Porter and Lavy said adjustments will most likely be made to make up for the lost funds.
"Everything will catch up," Porter said. "We'll have things evened out for the next budget."
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