By Katherine Gregg
Journal State House Bureau

For some State House employees, the General Assembly's decision to wrap up the year during an unusual Saturday session was a bonanza.

They didn't get overtime pay.

But for every hour they worked that one day they were credited with two hours of paid time off that -- with special permission from legislative leaders -- they could pile on top of the four weeks of paid time off to which legislative employees are already entitled if they work a heap of overtime.

As a matter of stated policy, General Assembly employees are "capped at 140 hours of comp time per year." Working the standard 35-hour state workweek, that would be tantamount to a month off.

But, "exceptions can be granted by the speaker or president to exceed the cap," according to a spokesman for House Speaker William J. Murphy, who chairs the leadership committee known as the Joint Committee on Legislative Services that approves legislative hiring and sets the rules.

The 2008 session ended in a 12-hour blur of stop-and-go activity on Saturday, June 20.

In the month since, JCLS director Marisa White has not responded to repeated inquiries about who was granted this opportunity to amass as much as 24 hours of paid time off for working that one last day of the six-month legislative session.

According to House spokesman Larry Berman, some -- but not all questions -- will be answered after the JCLS completes the report it is required to provide the Department of Administration by July 31 on all "employee leave balances" at the point the last budget year ended on June 30.

"At that time, she will be able to provide you with the number of employees who exceeded the 140 [hour] cap and were approved to go beyond it. She estimates that it is in the range of about 30 employees, but that is just an estimate at this point," Berman said.

"She said she is also pulling the numbers together of how many employees worked that Saturday. I will keep you posted," he apprised Political Scene.

Was it necessary to pay a phalanx of legislative employees double-time to work 12 hours on a Saturday to end a six-month legislative session? The answer:

Given the choice of working through the night Friday or perhaps starting anew the following week, Murphy and Senate President Joseph Montalbano decided around 11 p.m. Friday "that it would be prudent to continue on Saturday rather than go through the night with exhausted members and staff," Berman said.

"The determination was made in light of the particularly hectic week in which the House approved a budget after some 10 hours of debate on Wednesday. The fact that nearly 300 bills were passed during the Saturday session between the House and the Senate shows that it was more appropriate to meet on Saturday rather than go through the night.... It is also worth noting that the session ended on June 21, which is a week earlier than normal. In the past several years, the session ended in the last week of June."

And how much it cost depends on how you do the math.

The way the JCLS sees it, Berman said: "The only additional cost to having the closing day on a Saturday [as opposed to the following Monday or Tuesday] was that support staff who normally earn 1.5 hours of comp time for each additional hour worked were authorized to receive 2 hours for each additional hour worked [.5 more for each hour]."

And because of the way the calendar fell this year on the constitutional requirement that lawmakers convene on the first Tuesday in January, this was not the only double-time day for State House workers: Legislative leaders extended the same special benefit to everyone who worked the opening day of session, which this year fell on New Year's Day.

But for anyone jealous of the opportunity to take a month or more of paid leave time in the glory days of summer, White offers this perspective, through Berman: "No employee received overtime pay. Only those who were required for the legislative session were asked to work... Only the support staff received the two hours per one hour worked rate. That includes those in secretarial and clerical positions, technicians, data entry, etc.; Those considered "professional staff" or supervisory staff earned their straight one hour for every hour worked comp time rate."

And one more thing. "She wanted you to know that coming in that day was not a personal bonanza, but it was a requirement that is part of the job," Berman said. "Employees of the legislature don't simply work on session days and only the hours the legislators are in session. There is a great deal of preparation and follow-up work that goes on before and after and during. ... That's how the comp time gets built up."

Other than the extra comp time, he said, "there were no additional expenses... Both the House and Senate ordered sandwiches and pizza for lunch and post-session, but that would have been done had it been a weekday session."