Solving Albuquerque’s Budget Crisis: One Simple Step, Eliminate Outrageous Perk

In case you missed the Channel 13 news at 10pm, here is an excellent story for which I was interviewed. The story details the very generous government perk received by City employees who leave the bureaucracy for whatever reason and have built up a great deal of sick and vacation time.

A few important aspects of the story include:

1) According to Christine Trujillo the AFL-CIO, City employees “donate a lot of time and energy to their jobs;”
2) No one in the private sector receives such a generous payout (if they receive anything) for their unused sick or vacation time;
3) Government workers in New Mexico, including City workers, are paid as well or better than their peers in the private sector. Check out our study here. According to our data which is taken from federal numbers, state and local government workers in New Mexico earn 11.5 percent more than those in the private sector in terms of total compensation for their work.