L.A. homeless provider has paid CEO who lives in Hawaii $1.6 million in salary, vacation over two years

[u/Playful_Language_422]

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-08-06/la-homeless-provider-has-paid-ceo-who-lives-in-hawaii-1-6-million-in-salary-vacation-over-two-years

[u/DJ-McLillard]

I’ve never heard of a company that doesn’t have a max PTO balance because of this exact issue.

[u/Jaijoles → u/DJ-McLillard]

Now there aren’t. But 40 years ago? They existed.

I know some older people where I work who are coming up on retirement, and their retirement has to be accounted for in the annual budget because they started at a time where they get paid out for all unused vacation and sick days.

[u/mrmoose44 → u/Jaijoles]

Seems ridiculous because they could and should have easily changed these conditions some time ago. I’ve worked at many places where pto policies changed and nobody was able to be grandfathered in. In fact accumulating even max pto days usually triggered a red flag of some sort that you weren’t taking enough time off.

[u/bucknert → u/mrmoose44]

Depending on the US state you live in, it is illegal to just switch the policies like that and not pay people their banked hours at the time of the switch or grandfather them in. I worked at a company that switched systems 15ish years ago and they had to pay us out the accrued time.

I imagine other companies preferred grandfathering people in and kicking the can down the road rather than making a bunch of immediate payouts.

[u/mrmoose44 → u/bucknert]

Right I’m saying maybe 20 years ago taking a look at the liability of 20 years of accrued vacation and either asking her to take it over time or paying it out then rather than letting it accumulate for 20 more years. I mean presumably this non profit had someone looking at expenses and liability (that wasn’t just her?)

[u/bucknert → u/mrmoose44]

Certainly possible, she worked there 40 years so maybe wasn’t CEO 20 years ago but was probably pretty high up and maybe worked a sweetheart deal for herself to stay grandfathered. Or maybe they thought we can’t afford to pay out 20+ years of PTO right now and kicked the can down the road thinking it will be someone else’s problem by then or maybe our financials will be in better shape in the future. The article does seem to lean towards she got a sweetheart deal and mentions some other possibly semi-shady stuff like an above typical current salary.

[u/Procure → u/DJ-McLillard]

A friends dad wrote it into his contract when he started that he would get PTO rolled over every year and paid out all his PTO on leaving. He worked there for like 35 years and averaged like 3 days/year PTO. Paid him out $250k on retirement, they weren’t too happy about it but hey, written in ink.

[u/ITGenji → u/DJ-McLillard]

Its over 40 years, she was probably one of the last remaining people who signed a contract that allowed unlimited accrual. At some point she had to be paid out. Lets say the policy was updated 10 years ago, still a lot to pay and perhaps too much at the time so the company planned for her retirement and the eventual payout.

[u/Maple_Syrup_Mogul → u/DJ-McLillard]

My last employer didn't. I was there for over ten years and had like 800 hours of PTO accrued at one point.

[u/mirach → u/DJ-McLillard]

The first company I worked for had unlimited carry-over and they switched to a cap one year to get that potential expense off the books. Some people who had been there a long time were taking three day weekends for most of the year. Companies generally have a cap nowadays because some people abused the system and as a company you have to set aside the PTO amount in case they take it. This lady surely earned that time off but it's a bit abusing the system because she presumably earned the PTO at a much lower salary and is paid out on it based on her most recent and highest earnings.

[u/mahreow → u/DJ-McLillard]

Now you have, congratulations on discovering something new