Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy has reversed a policy change that resulted in lucrative vacation payouts to former Supt. Jody Weis and members of Weis’ command staff.
Weis and his chief of staff, Mike Masters, were among 1,026 city employees who were paid $7.4 million in all for unused vacation days since September in the transition from former Mayor Richard M. Daley to Emanuel, the Chicago Sun-Times reported last month.
Weis, who’s now deputy director of the private Chicago Crime Commission, walked away with a $76,308 lump-sum payment for 64 unused vacation days. Masters, now Cook County’s homeland security chief, left police headquarters with a check for $30,448 — the equivalent of 54 unused vacation days.Both benefited from the former superintendent’s June 2010 change in the policy governing vacation carryover, allowing “command staff members” to carry up to 39 unused vacation days from year to year “when circumstances prohibited the use of current and prior year’s allotments.” Weis made that change after starting the final year of his three-year, $310,000-a-year contract.
- “When circumstances change, such as discontinuing the unpaid furlough days for command personnel, then decisions and policies associated with such changes need to be reviewed, and changed, if deemed appropriate,” Weis said Tuesday. “Garry is doing exactly what he should be doing.”