How much are Southern Nevada governments spending for unused PTO?

Añadido: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]diving into the numbers in the finances here on this Friday morning because paid time off for public employees continues to be so generous that just last year Clark County and three individual cities paid millions of dollars in buybacks to employees who didn't use their time.

[00:00:15]Rachel O'Brien from Open the Books joins us here on this Friday morning with a live breakdown of those numbers. Rachel, good morning. Um, can you put it in perspective for us? I let let's focus on Clark County employees first. How does it compare to previous years?

[00:00:29]Yeah, so as you mentioned, Kim's off, Chloe Corcostes off. Hopefully they're using vacation days. [laughter] Yes, they are. Yes. Hopefully they're both well.

[00:00:37]Um, but I'm assuming that they don't get big fat checks when they don't use all their days off. So, these public employees, Clark County, and then we'll we'll talk about the cities, they can save up all their unused leave and they can cash it in either while they're still working there or when they leave.

[00:00:51]So, it increases every year. Last year, 16 and a half million dollars. The year before that it was 15 million dollars.

[00:00:59]Before that, 13. Before that, 11.6. So, it's going up a million and a half, 2 million every year. So, last year, almost 10 million was cashed out for sick time sell back, 5 million for vacation sell back, and then another one and a half million for these sort of bonus sell backs people get to cash in all that time. What about the cities? I which which cities did you focus on? How does it compare to to what the county's doing?

[00:01:23]Yeah, so Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas. Collectively, they paid their employees about 20 million dollars for unused time.

[00:01:31]It's almost exactly the same as the year before. So, it's not necessarily going up there. Las Vegas paid 6 million dollars, North Las Vegas 6 and a half million, Henderson 7 and a half million.

[00:01:43]Um, they had the biggest chunk of change there. Um, and they only paid over 500 employees. You know, if Las Vegas was for 1,200 people, North Las Vegas 750, Henderson paid 7 and a half million to 500 people um for not using that that time off. I'm curious about uh what a lot of people might think be thinking is there is there watching this right now saying hey I work for private company. I don't work for the city. I don't work for the county. How does it compare public employee paid time off compared to the private sector? Around the country consistently they get more sick and vacation days than people in the private sector and then besides besides the amount of days they get they get to roll over those days and get them paid for in in many cases private sector doesn't allow that so the average worker work in the private sector they get seven days of sick leave per year.

[00:02:30]That's compared to 12 days for for public employees.

[00:02:33]Private sector between 11 and 20 vacation days depending on how long you've worked there government employees a little bit more between 13 and 22 days and again, you know, you there you're not getting these checks. I I I should go back and mention the largest payout check was $475,000 in Clark County.

[00:02:54]You know, that you can save up that much time and get paid for it is it's astronomical.

[00:02:59]>> Yeah. Yeah, I mean we we we got those rollover days here and I keep I keep banking them as I keep showing up on here and not taking that vacation. So Rachel, we appreciate you making sense of it all. Certainly appreciate it.

[00:03:12]Rachel open the books.com again open the books.com that website right there at the bottom of your screen. Thanks for being here Rachel.