After trying repeatedly to soften the blow, split House members signed off Monday on legislation that will transform the way state employees use their sick leave.
House Bill 213 would phase out a program that allows state workers to trade their accumulated sick leave hours for medical coverage after retirement.
During more than an hour of debate, a handful of lawmakers tried to amend the bill to delay its implementation or grandfather longtime state employees under the old sick leave policy. In the end, Democratic and moderate Republican lawmakers were unable to stop the bill from advancing to the Senate with the minimum 38 votes needed.
Worried about the growing financial burden of providing the benefit to aging baby boom generation employees, sponsoring Rep. Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara, argued lawmakers have to "put a fence" around the program and cap the state's liability. Currently, state workers can trade eight hours of stored sick leave for one month of medical insurance benefits. Clark's plan would require the state's 25,000 employees to deposit 25 percent of the value of sick leave accumulated after Jan. 1, 2006, into a 401(k) account; the rest would be transferred into medical benefits, but at a lesser rate.
The generous sick leave policy was developed to try to keep state employees from fleeing to better-paying jobs in the private sector or local government.
"I'm really concerned that we promise certain benefits to people and then we come in and pull those out from under them," said Cottonwood Heights Democratic Rep. Karen Morgan.
Ogden Democratic Rep. Neil Hansen tried to put off the bill's implementation for one year. Clearfield Republican Rep. Paul Ray tried to delay it five years. And Kearns GOP Rep. Eric Hutchings offered a substitute bill that would have grandfathered all state employees who will be vested in state benefits by July 1 of this year.
Conservative Republicans resisted all such amendments.
"This is a decision we have to make. We can't put it off," said Majority Leader Jeff Alexander, R-ProvoÂ. "We need to be thinking about taxpayers as well here. Let's cap this. Let's stop the bleeding."
