By Joe Ragusa

BLOOMINGTON – Bloomington’s sick leave buyback program will be addressed at Monday night’s city council meeting.

The council will have three options to consider. One option involves paying out unused sick days two months after the employee’s final paycheck.

City Attorney Jeff Jurgens believes this option will survive any legal challenges the city may face over changing a promised benefit.

“I think it’s fair to say that the employees that we’ve discussed this with do not consider this as a good option. I think this would create, obviously, some issues within the ranks of the city,” Jurgens said. “But we want to make sure that the council has this option as something available to discuss.”

Another option would pay out unpaid sick leave in the employee’s final paycheck.

“Then it would just be subject to the IMRF’s 125 percent rule,” Jurgens said.

That rule puts a cap on an employee’s average salary in the final three months of employment so they can’t boost their pension payouts. The city has paid $1.2 million in accelerated payments to the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund because of 16 employees who went around that rule.

The last option would be for the council to do nothing regarding its sick leave buyback program and instead craft a resolution urging the state to change its pension laws.

Jurgens said the city has about 250 employees who still qualify for the program since they were hired before the city eliminated the program for new hires in 2012. He said there’s no way of knowing how many employees could actually exploit the perk to boost their average salary and consequently boost their pension payouts.

“We really feel like some of the largest liabilities on this are probably behind the city,” Jurgens said.

Any policy change would only involve employees with pensions through the IMRF. Employees like the city’s police officers, firefighters or library personnel have different policies.

Joe Ragusa can be reached at [email protected].