Executive
Waste of the Day: Texas Administrator Covertly Received $85,000 After Retiring
Topline: The assistant city manager in Austin, Texas stopped working four months before his retirement but kept collecting his taxpayer salary anyway, netting $85,000 at the end of last year.
WTF is going on in Texas?
Key facts: On September 1, 2023, Austin announced in a memo that Assistant City Manager Rodney Gonzalez would retire “effective in January,” implying that Gonzalez would keep working for the rest of the year.
In reality, Gonzales stopped working that September. The city placed Gonzalez on paid administrative leave, allowing him to keep collecting his salary until January, according to city records provided to OpenTheBooks through a public records request.
Gonzales made almost twice as much per month as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott despite being on leave.
Auditors at OpenTheBooks.com discovered the payments through the records that revealed $12 million in paid administrative leave spending in Austin from 2021-2023. Paid leave is used for employees who are not working for reasons like jury duty or a disciplinary investigation.
When reached for comment, city officials said only that, “It was part of the agreement between Gonzales and the City to assist during the transitionary period.”
Records revealed three other Austin employees who collected more than $100,000 while on paid leave and 83 people who spent more than 100 days on leave since 2021.
That includes the first-ever director of the city’s Office of Civil Rights and the former head of Human Resources.
Austin has always had a wasteful city government
Background: The city manager’s office has been at the center of Austin’s taxpayer waste for some time now.
OpenTheBooks found last year that former City Manager Spencer Cronk earned nearly $1 million in a single year, including salary, benefits and severance pay, when he was fired in 2022,
This February, video leaked of Bozeman, Montana City Manager Jeff Mihelich discussing Austin’s attempts to recruit him to replace Cronk. He called Austin “stupid” — among other words not fit to reprint — for offering candidates a very high salary of $475,000, plus allowances for a car, house and more.
The city never returned OpenTheBooks’ request for comment on the accuracy of Mihelich’s statement.
Mihelich was put on paid leave by the Bozeman City Commission for mocking the waste of public money. Ironically, his severance package ended costing Montana taxpayers $172,000.
Summary: Taxpayers are on the hook for paid administrative leave in most U.S. cities, but funding an administrator’s secret early retirement is anything but normal.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.
This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.
Adam Andrzejewski (say: Angie-eff-ski) was the CEO/founder of OpenTheBooks.com. Before dedicating his life to public service, Adam co-founded HomePages Directories, a $20 million publishing company (1997-2007). His works have been featured on the BBC, Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight, C-SPAN, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, FOX News, CNN, National Public Radio (NPR), Forbes, Newsweek, and many other national media.
Today, OpenTheBooks.com is the largest private repository of U.S. public-sector spending. Mission: post "every dime, online, in real time." In 2022, OpenTheBooks.com captured nearly all public expenditures in the country, including nearly all disclosed federal government spending; 50 of 50 state checkbooks; and 25 million public employee salary and pension records from 50,000 public bodies across America.
The group's aggressive transparency and forensic auditing of government spending has led to the assembly of grand juries, indictments, and successful prosecutions; congressional briefings, hearings, and subpoenas; Government Accountability Office (GAO) audits; Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports; federal legislation; and much more.
Our Honorary Chairman - In Memoriam is U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, MD.
Andrzejewski's federal oversight work was included in the President's Budget To Congress FY2021. The budget cited his organization by name, bullet-pointed their findings, and footnoted/hyperlinked to their report.
Posted on YouTube, Andrzejewski's presentation, The Depth of the Swamp, at the Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar 2020 in Naples, Florida received 3.8 million views.
Andrzejewski has spoken at the Columbia School of Journalism, Harvard Law School and the law schools at Georgetown and George Washington regarding big data journalism. As a senior policy contributor at Forbes, Adam had nearly 20 million pageviews on 206 published investigations. In 2022, investigative fact-finding on Dr. Fauci's finances led to his cancellation at Forbes.
In 2022, Andrzejewski did 473 live television and radio interviews across broadcast, major cable platforms, and radio shows. Andrzejewski is the author of The Waste of the Day column at Real Clear Policy. The column is syndicated by Sinclair Broadcast Group, owners of nearly 200 ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX affiliates across USA.
Andrzejewski passed away in his sleep at his home in in Hinsdale, Illinois, on August 18, 2024. He is survived by his wife Kerry and three daughters. He also served as a lector at St. Isaac Jogues Catholic Church and finished the Chicago Marathon eight times (PR 3:58.49 in 2022).
Waste of the Day articles published after August 18, 2024 are considered posthumous publications.
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