WyBlog

It's a process called terminal leave. Employees can sometimes save up their days off and then use them all in the final year on the job, letting them get a head start on retirement while drawing a paycheck. Some take most of their final year off - and others actually get pay raises during this time.

"Limiting cash payouts for sick leave is totally meaningless unless we plug the loophole you could drive a truck through," said Assemblyman Declan O'Scanlon (R-Monmouth). "It's a way around the limitation that will absolutely be exploited."

Workers taking terminal leave can be costly for towns, not the least because they're paid at their current salary, rather than the lower pay they received while accruing the time years ago. It also gives a town two choices: Leave the post unfilled, or hire a second person to do the same job.

Suzanne Castleman, mayor of Little Silver, a Monmouth County town of 6,000 residents, said workers will stay on the books for six or seven months before officially retiring. "It's very tough in a small town where you have to pay two people to do the job of one," she said.

Mimi Letts said when she was Parsippany mayor from 1994 to 2005, almost one-tenth of the police force was on terminal leave at any given time. Some got pay raises while awaiting retirement.

"It was absolutely incredible the number of police officers sitting at home collecting their salaries," she said. "I told everybody we couldn't afford two police departments, one at home and one on duty."