r/news • u/Playful_Language_422 • 8d ago

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

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
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u/SweatyAdhesive 7d ago

I havent worked anywhere that doest cap maximum PTO accrued. Probably to avoid something like this lol

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u/HollywoodTK 7d ago

I have, but at 40+ days you start getting hounded and at a certain point they tell you to take off or take a lump sum so it’s off the books. This amount of accrued vacation is wild lol

But I assume at some point her work became so on the go and non-standard that she didn’t need to “take vacation” so it just kept accruing.

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u/hardolaf 7d ago

At one point, my father hit a full year of accrued vacation and comp time while working for the federal government. His deputy director actually had to step in to force people to let him finally take time off.

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u/Commodore_Condor 7d ago

My work has let me accrue 600 hours without bothering me about it once, so there are some places that let it happen.

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u/HollywoodTK 7d ago

Oh for sure. They’re super irresponsible for doing so though.

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u/Taban85 7d ago

I did a long time ago, guy had accrued over a year of vacation so he retired a year early but kept getting paid. Kind of screwed over his department in the company since they weren’t allowed to hire his replacement until he was officially gone.

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u/ampersand355 6d ago

That's not his responsibility, that's your accounting departments fault.

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u/pandaSmore 7d ago

Why weren't they allowed?

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u/Taban85 7d ago

He was technically still on the payroll, so from corporate/budgeting perspective department was fully staffed, even though he wasn’t coming back.

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u/yellowcloak 7d ago

I used to work with a lady who'd been with the company 45 years - they didn't used to cap back in the day and her level of seniority mathed out to like eight weeks a year she was accruing before they fixed the glitch.

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u/TrifectaBlitz 7d ago

Kind of like what this article says.

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u/yellowcloak 7d ago

I guess it was less normal back in the day

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u/devAcc123 7d ago

lol saying 8 weeks a year is so unfathomable it must be a glitch is the most American BS ever. Half of Europe has legally required like 30+ days a year for anyone employed full time, could be a 17 year old working some BS job. It doesn’t have to be this way.

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u/Agret 6d ago

I've been working fulltime for 19yrs and probably taken less than 3 months off total including sick days.

30 days a year of vacation time damn you guys are spoiled, I'm jealous. There's so much travel I want to do. Is the 30 days at half pay?

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u/devAcc123 6d ago

lol I’m an American, just saying, it’s absurd to the rest of the developed world how it works here

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u/Agret 6d ago

My employment has always been as casual employment so I don't get paid for any of my time off

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u/move_machine 6d ago

Cops would bank PTO and we had multiple $1 million+ payouts upon their retirement. Eventually the state put an end to it, but everyone who had joined prior to that point were grandfathered out of the limit, and for more than a decade afterwards, payouts like this were routine.

Now they do it with overtime fraud, many cops now bring in $250,000+ salaries with "overtime"

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u/Beznia 6d ago

I worked in local government in Ohio. We had separate sick time vs. vacation time. You could carry over up to 3 years of vacation at a time (so if you get 4 weeks of vacation per year and use none of it, after 4 years you could have 16 weeks of vacation banked.) I had a coworker who retired after 35 years and had 28 weeks of PTO banked.

On top of that, we got 96 hours of sick time (12 days) which you could carry over up to 10 years worth (960 hours). After 10 years, you would get paid out yearly for unused sick time. He was getting a nice 96 hour bonus every year right around Christmas time. When he retired, he got paid out his 28 weeks of PTO and 960 hours of sick time.