Ritter: Recalculate severance

Owens appointee's $55,528 check may be off by thousands

Lynn Bartels, Rocky Mountain News

Published February 27, 2007 at midnight

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Gov. Bill Ritter wants an examination of recent severance checks after learning Monday that one of former Gov. Bill Owens' Cabinet directors might have been overpaid thousands of dollars.

Marva Hammons, who served as Owens' executive director of the Department of Human Services, received a final check for $55,528.28 when she left her job in January after a new administration came in.

Hammons had the heftiest severance check of any Owens appointee.

Hammons' check was calculated by her department, which credited her for her final pay period and all the unused vacation and sick leave she had accumulated since being appointed by Owens in January 1999.

Now it appears that a 2004 memo regarding how leave is calculated was misread, said Liz McDonough, Human Services spokeswoman.

"The department made an interpretation that now seems incorrect but seemed reasonable at the time," McDonough said.

It's unclear at this point how much, if any, Hammons was overpaid.

The current administration will ask every department that issued severance checks to outgoing Owens appointees to check the calculations, Ritter spokesman Evan Dreyer said Monday.

"If any executive director was overpaid, then he or she ought to repay the state," Dreyer said. "We will make every effort to get the taxpayers' money back into the state's coffers."

Hammons now works in Seattle for a nonprofit agency dealing with foster care. She could not be reached for comment.

Owens' former chief of staff, Bob Lee, in 2004 issued a policy change that allowed appointees to accrue unlimited sick and vacation leave.

The nature of the previous policy is unclear.

Some senior staffers said they don't believe they were allowed to accrue vacation and lost it because they were too busy to use it. Others said they believe appointees were allowed to transfer a portion - but not all - of their unused leave each year.

Lee said Monday that the policy was changed as an incentive to keep staffers on board through the end of Owens' term. The longer they stayed, the larger their final check would be.

"Members of the Cabinet had gone 2 1/2 years without salary increases. These were talented, hard-working individuals, and we felt it was important to offer them incentives," he said.

Each department keeps track of its own payroll.

McDonough said two different portions of the memo led payroll officials to believe that Hammons should be credited for all of her unused sick leave and vacation.

But other portions of the memo state that the policy is retroactive only to July 1, 2004.

The overpayment is the latest in a string of payroll revelations involving the Owens administration. The former governor has taken heat for giving bonuses to his departing staff.

In addition, Owens has said he knew nothing about action taken by his personnel director to extend contracts for employees whose jobs were set to end this June 30.

bartels@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5327

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