In late August, when Mayor Cara Spencer tightened up the city’s relatively lax policies pertaining to family and medical leave, it wasn’t the sort of move at City Hall that garners big headlines—but it seems to be having a big impact.
Prior to the change, under a policy Tishaura Jones implemented in 2022, city employees had six weeks of paid time off at their disposal for any medical issue affecting themselves or a family member. There were minimal hoops to jump through to access the time off, and employees had wide discretion in terms of how they wanted to take it. For instance, someone could take off every Wednesday, 30 Wednesdays in a row.
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The leave was used liberally, some might say abused, drawing down the city’s workforce on any given day and affecting the delivery of city services and functioning of city government.
Spencer’s change was relatively simple: employees must now use all their sick, vacation, and other paid time off before accessing those six weeks of paid leave.
In the six weeks or so since, the change has had a real effect on the headcount of city employees showing up to work, as evidenced by data provided by various city agencies to the mayor’s office and later obtained by SLM.
At the Fire Department, the policy change has led to a “dramatic increase in available daily manpower,” the department reported. As recently as July 2023, the city was paying 2,500 hours per two-week pay period, just for the Fire Department’s family and medical leave alone. Right before the new policy went into effect, that number was still around 2,000 hours per pay period. More recently, that number is down by around 85 percent from that 2023 high.
This summer, prior to the change, the Public Utilities Department had 16 employees using an average of 23 hours of leave per pay period. By September, there was just one employee using two hours of leave. The city’s Board of Public Service saw a similarly significant drop.
The Department of Public Safety indicated its staffing levels had stabilized as well, with some divisions, like Buildings and Excise, reporting no family and medical leave use since the policy change.
Why It Matters: The liberal leave policy not only hampered the city civil service, it also created headaches for Jones as she fought for re-election. In January, KMOV reported on the “alarming” numbers of city employees on leave. After losing the election to Spencer, Jones named the policy as one of her biggest regrets, calling it “more difficult in practice than it is in theory.”
What’s Next: It’s one thing to have civil servants back at their posts, another to get city government smoothly and efficiently delivering services—the central promise of the Spencer campaign. Time will tell if that happens.
