Letter: Public sector can learn from private

Sunday, Aug. 12, 2007 | 7:39 a.m.

Your Aug. 5 editorial about excessive overtime pay for government employees in Clark County was timely (pardon the pun). I do feel that an exception is Metro Police . They are woefully understaffed where the rubber meets the road (perhaps by design?), which is one reason for the excessive overtime problem. But this is only one facet of local government employment.

Unfortunately, simply hiring more people won't always solve the problem. This is because when more government employees are hired, management will make the case that they are now asked to do more and they should be given commensurate salary increases, perhaps add more managers, or both. Not only will taxpayers then foot the bill for more staff, but also the additional managerial costs.

One way to resolve this is to do what private industry does: make practically everyone salaried with no overtime, just "comp time." This way employees are assigned specific duties and if it takes them 35 or 50 hours per week to accomplish their assignments, well so be it.

The practice of including "scheduled" overtime when calculating defined benefit pensions is one of many abuses now permissible by some government employee contracts in Clark County. Extend private industry practices further and never include overtime pay when calculating any pension or the cashing out of sick leave benefits.

If an employee is too sick to work for three or more consecutive days, then he either bring s a physician's report or applies for disability. Clark County government employees, welcome to the real world.

Richard Rychtarik, Las Vegas