SACRAMENTO - Despite budget cuts and threats to close up shop, California State Park employees cashed in big on their vacation time and taxpayers are footing the bill.
An unauthorized vacation buyout program for those workers costs $271,000.
It all surfaced last October when State Park employees told the executive staff a high-ranking person in the department was paying workers cash for their unused vacation time.
This sparked an investigation by the department and the attorney general.
State Parks said it has already took personnel action against some of the people in charge.
"We were not happy with this, either," said Roy Stearns, deputy director of Communications for the Department of Parks and Recreation. "It was wrong. Should not have happened, and we took, went about cleaning our house immediately."
None of the 56 workers who cashed out their vacation time were told to pay that money back because it's not against the law for state workers to do this.
Stearns said the vacation money was earned and owed to those employees when they retired, so they're not expected to pay that money back.
"It is not criminally wrong to pay somebody their vacation," he said. "They are due that money that they have earned when they retire, but not before they retire. So, in this case, there was a small group of people that by one particular person did it wrong and paid out vacation time when they were not supposed to."
But by law the state Human Resources Department must approve the payouts and it said it hasn't approved that since 2007.
And now the question is: With State Parks on the chopping block and non-profits forking out money to keep them open, could that employee cash have been used?
The person, who investigators said issued the vacation payouts without authorization, was re-assigned to a lower-paying job and eventually resigned.
