We all know now that Judge Verne Hodge, on his retirement, did not send the USVI government a bill for $400,000 to repay him for unused leave time — the local personnel compensation figured out the $400,000 total all by itself.
Let me raise a different question: what would the judge's lump-sum retirement check be (in addition, of course to a steady pension) had he worked for the U.S. civil service — like the local judges in American Samoa?
As any fed with a calculator can tell you, the lump sum payment for the judge, based on his $110,000-a-year salary, would have been no more than $12,692.31.
Why the huge difference?
Having just left the federal government myself (with about $7,000 in a lump-sum payment that came to me automatically, without my filing a claim of any kind), and having worked with my own paysheets and those of my subordinates, I can summarize it as follows.
Apparently the Judge — and we have no reason to doubt him — said that he used compensatory time (comp time) to take care of annual leave (vacations) and sick days during his 23 years on the bench; as a result the USVI system calculated that it now owes him for all the unused vacation and sick time he earned during those years.
Let's look at an imaginary two-week period, and the different ways that the USVI and the federal systems would have handled them.
The judge, in the first week, worked 48 hours in court and in chambers; the following Monday he spent the day undergoing some medical tests, and then returned to work for 32 hours for the balance of the second week.
The USVI system would have recorded 48 hours of work time the first week, and 32 hours of work time the second, adding to an 80-hour pay period with no use of sick leave; the federal system would have recorded 40 hours of work the first week, 32 hours the second week, and charged the judge 8 hours in sick time.
Over the years these two systems produce very different results.
One might bear in mind, as I move through this explanation, that the island government (the one with the $400,000 bill) is flat broke, while the federal government, that would have sent him a check for no more than $12,692.31, is overflowing with billions of dollars in surpluses every month.
Maybe one of the several reasons that the feds have such a nice surplus, and the USVI is so broke, is that the feds handle their payroll costs more carefully than do the islands!
The key to the $400,000 figure is the Judge's use of compensatory time; this may appear unremarkable to the outsider, but in the federal system comp time rarely applies to professionals, such as executives, lawyers and judges.
Comp time, in most federal system, is for clerks, laborers, mechanics, and low-level professionals, and it can not be accumulated over the years. Some agencies, such as the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, routinely pay overtime or use comp time at the lower levels, but this is the exception, not the rule, in the Executive Branch agencies where I have worked.
The general notion is that lawyers and other professionals are not timeclock punchers, and are expected to work long hours from time to time without extra compensation — hence overtime payments are rarely made, and comp time (as a matter of principle) is routinely rejected by civil service professionals who may be nominally eligible for it.
In a recent position I supervised a staff of a dozen, 11 professionals and a clerk; only the clerk and the lowest ranking two professionals claimed comp time. This is par for the course.
Let us assume, however, that the Judge, even without the use of comp time, had not used all the annual leave coming to him, and had not used some of his sick days — how would he have been compensated for that, had he been a fed?
As for sick leave, the newly-retired fed gets no lump-sum payment, but if there is enough unused sick time this is calculated into the pension payment. I had several months unused sick leave, and this increased my pension by about two percent over what it would have been had I used all my sick days. But no lump sum payments!
As for annual leave, the feds have a "use-it-or-lose-it" rule; you can carry over no more than 240 hours (six weeks) in annual leave from year to year. The lump sum of $12,692.31 for the judge was calculated as follows:
$110,000/year divided by 2080 hours/year = $52.88/hour.
$52.88 x 240 = $12,692.31.
I make these comments with no specific interest in Judge Hodge — but because it reflects what may be an underlying personnel compensation system that applies to other USVI employees as well, the end-of-the-term use of comp time by high-paid government officials. (I have seen similar, generous claims filed by departing local officials in American Samoa).
If the USVI wants to get its finances under control, it needs, among other things, to eliminate comp time as a factor in executive pay — it is only appropriate for middling and bottom-of-the-rung employees — but not for high executives, lawyers and judges.
And the federal compensation system is right there as a time-tested model — no re-invention of the wheel is needed, just the political will to hold down the fringes for those at the top of the governmental pay ladder.
Editor's note: David North, a retired federal employee, frequently writes on governmental financial matters.