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PSS to release retirement bonus
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Posted on Sep 30 1999
The Public School System will begin cutting checks for the retirement bonus of 37 PSS employees whose cash benefits have been withheld since December due to funding problem, education officials said yesterday.
The Board of Education has approved Commissioner Rita Inos’ move to reduce funding for different PSS programs in order to raise $525,000 in retirement obligation.
“If the administration and the legislature don’t want to give us the money, then we have to produce it ourselves because we have a liability to our employees,” board member Marja Lee Taitano said at yesterday’s meeting of the BOE’s fiscal committee.
Board member Tom Pangelinan said PSS can start distributing the checks next week.
PSS was forced to use internal funds following Finance Secretary Lucy Nielsen’s rejection of the agency’s request that it be allowed to use personnel funds to settle its retirement obligations.
On top of its $36 million budget for FY 1999, PSS has received a supplemental budget of $1.7 million to help the agency pay the salaries of its employees throughout the end of fiscal year, which falls today.
PSS, which has already used up its regular appropriation for personnel, is relying on the $1.7 million to keep its employees in the agency.
Bill Matson, PSS fiscal officer, said that in its most recent payroll request — the last one for the current fiscal year — PSS included the payment for the retired employees’ cash benefits.
However, Matson said, the finance secretary did not transmit the amount requested for retirement pay, explaining that the law which appropriated the supplemental budget only covered regular personnel costs, and not the retirement benefits.
Education officials have agreed to pool the funds taken from other programs saying they did not want the retirees to continue waiting for what is due them.
Several government employees opted to retire last year to take advantage of the 30 percent retirement bonus. (MCM)
