Agenda Packets - 2003/04/07 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Item No: 12 Meeting Date: April 7, 2003 Type of Business: Worksession City of Mounds View Staff Report To: Honorable Mayor and City Council From: James Ericson, Acting City Administrator Item Title/Subject: Discuss the Proposed Sick Leave Policy. Introduction: This item is on your agenda at the request of the Council. The proposed policy was reviewed and discussed at the Council’s last worksession and further discussion was determined necessary. The Council had requested comments from the League of MN Cities, our Finance Department and the City’s labor consultant, Labor Relations Associates. Discussion: Labor Relations stated their position initially at the first meeting this item had been introduced. They indicate that such a policy should be negotiated under the terms of the City’s labor agreements. The Finance department indicated that such a policy, if one were enacted, would result in extra staff time and system manipulation to manage; yet this would not be an overwhelming task, especially in light of how infrequently the policy would be utilized by employees. Last, LMC responded with some concerns of their own, which are as follows: “While we understand and respect the city’s desire to help employees in these difficult situations, following are some serious issues that the city should address before adopting such a policy – some of these considerations could be addressed with a very specific and restrictive policy, others may be more difficult: 1. Employees who abuse sick leave are left with little incentive to save their sick leave for a “rainy day” if they have a sick leave donation policy to fall back on. 2. The city would need to address some serious data privacy issues in order to administer such a policy – i.e., medical data on employees is private data. At minimum, the city would have to require the employee to sign a release prior to soliciting donations on behalf of the employee. Also, any medical data needs to be protected under state privacy laws (and possibly federal privacy laws-- the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act may be applicable, but it’s difficult to determine as the regulations have not really been tested yet.) Although it is tempting to have the employee solicit donations him/herself in order to avoid these privacy issues, the city should probably not handle solicitations in this manner. It could cause co-workers to feel coerced to donate and in the case of a supervisor soliciting donations from a subordinate, the coercion would potentially be even more problematic for the city.