On April 28, the Sun ran a cartoon indicating that Santa Barbara County management employees have maintained the ability to cash out vacation time (vacation conversion) while non-management employees have had that ability taken from them. The purpose of this correspondence is to provide you with correct information and request that you publish the correction.
On April 12, 2011, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors adopted a change to the Management Resolution, which covers unrepresented line employees, managers, and executives, requiring all requests for vacation conversion to obtain County Executive Officer concurrence prior to a department director approving the request.
On the other hand, all represented employees, which includes both management and non-management classifications, continue to have language in their contracts that provides their department head with the discretion to approve vacation conversions and does not require the concurrence of the county executive officer. Though the county is actively negotiating with the unions to require county executive officer concurrence, no agreements have yet been reached.
In addition, various groups of employees currently have a varying number of hours they can potentially convert each year. Not only do unrepresented managers have the ability to request to convert up to 80 hours of saved vacation time each year, the following employees do as well:
unrepresented non-management employees
employees represented by the Deputy District Attorneys Association
employees represented by Fire Fighters, Local 2046
employees represented by the Sheriff Managers Association
employees represented by the Union of American Physicians and Dentists.
This article appears in May 5-12, 2011.