Legal Question in Employment Law in Illinois

Labor and Employment Law

In the Lake County, Illinois laws is there a difference between a "County employee" and "Grant Funded employee" when both payroll checks are coming from that �County Payroll Office�? Both employees are under the same elected superintended who has leadership over (Lake County Regional Office of Education) LCROE/LCESD.

One grant funded employee retired from the LCESD (Lake County Education Services Division) had to payout vacation time that this person had (assistant superintended was surprised at the amount had to be given to retired employee. assistant superintended has leadership over LCESD).

County employees are saying that this action is not lawful and wrong but if Grant Funded employees fight against this by refusing to sign they will lose their job.

Only Grant Funded employees are being asked to sign a vacation agreement. In effects to save the grant budget; is this lawful under Law County? I need to know what Law code it is and where can it be found?

1. In the Lake County, Illinois laws is there a difference between a "County employee" and "Grant Funded employee" when both payroll checks are coming from that �County Payroll Office�?

2. Should Grant Funded employees sign this letter?

3. is this letter lawful under Law County?

This is the Letter

Lake County Regional Office of Education

Vacation Day Accrual Policy

Effective: July 1, 2010 (FY 2011 School Year)

Wherever possible and fiscally prudent, the Lake County Regional Office of Education and its subordinate offices have willingly complied with Lake County government�s personnel policies and practices. Our rationale has been that even though many of our employees work in grant-funded positions as �at will employees,� the subject grants have been relatively stable and it has been prudent for consistency�s sake to attempt to follow county policies and practices for all employees, whether grant or county-funded.

The benefits of such a philosophy have been many and include:

� Reasonable health and dental benefits

� Timely and efficient county payroll services

� Access to retirement plans (e.g. IMRF)

� Access to county life insurance plans

One Lake County program that the Regional Office of Education has attempted to support has become fiscally impractical under current grant management criteria. That is the county policy of allowing for accumulated vacation time (up to 330 hours) that can be carried over from fiscal year to fiscal year. Lake County policy allows for this unused vacation time to be payable to the employee upon departure from the organization or retirement.

This vacation carry-over policy impacts upon the organization in two ways. First, the Regional Office of Education has no means for budgeting for such a �pay-out� event and no means under year-to-year grant criteria to set aside funds for future use. As a result, when a person departs employment from the organization, we currently pay out all accumulated vacation days (up to 330 hours at current salary rates) regardless of our ability to pay using grant funds. In virtually all cases where this has occurred, the impact upon the organization�s budget has been severe. Second, in circumstances where the departing employee is a retiring individual under the Teacher Retirement System (TRS), the Regional Office of Education incurs severe risk of penalty payments to TRS for exceeding TRS guidelines regarding maximum allowable increases to the employee�s creditable pay. In this case, the ROE not only pays the vacation days at the current salary rate, but also pays TRS penalties.

The ROE and all subordinate agencies will honor previously demonstrated commitments to current employees, but cannot support such an open-ended vacation policy into the future. As a result, the following changes to vacation time policy will be instated:

� A calculation will be made of the current vacation day balance for each grant-funded ROE employee. That number of vacation days/hours and the value of the days at current salary will be provided to the employee in writing. A copy of the same document will be inserted in the employee�s local personnel file. Upon departure from employment with the ROE, the individual will be paid for that amount of accrued leave plus any unused days accrued through the final year of employment (the combined total not to exceed the Lake County limit of 330 hours). Note: An employee may choose to use these banked days in a future year (for example: A bank of 20 days is established for an employee as a result of this policy change. In a subsequent year the employee desires to take 20 days of vacation but is only entitled to 15 days per year. The employee can use 5 days of the accumulated days along with the 15 days accrued during the year. The banked days will then be reduced to 15 days, etc.). If the bank of accumulated days is reduced in such a manner, the employee will be issued an up-dated memorandum thus stating at the end of the fiscal year.

� Effective with the 2011 fiscal year (July 1, 2010), ROE employees who work in grant-funded positions will accrue vacation time in accordance with Lake County policy but will not be allowed to accumulate vacation days beyond the current fiscal year. In effect, we will go into a �use or lose� policy for annual vacation days. Vacation days earned in Fiscal Year 2011 (July 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011) that have not been used by August 31, 2011 will be lost. This overlap of fiscal years (July 1, 2010 through August 31, 2011) is in recognition of the fact that our organization closely follows the work patterns of the schools we support and that the July-August time periods are traditional vacation periods for persons in the education field. This same pattern will continue into future fiscal years.

� Effective with the 2011 fiscal year, new employees in grant-funded positions will be subject to the procedures described in the previous paragraph and will not be allowed to accumulate unused vacation days.

o In the event of termination of employment, only vacation days accrued and unused during the current year will be compensated.

o Acknowledgement of this policy will be a condition of employment with the ROE and a copy of the acknowledgement will be placed in all new employee personnel files.

I acknowledge receipt of this policy and understand that a copy of this acknowledgement will be placed in my local personnel file.

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