Lottery board rethinking employee benefits

Bottorff and his colleagues approved the policy at the board’s March 29 meeting.

“We have been in a hectic startup environment, often times moving quickly to address interim concerns,” Bottorff wrote in a letter Thursday to Rebecca Paul, the lottery’s president and chief executive officer. “Upon reflection, I realize I made a mistake and moved too quickly to approve these policies.”

Currently, employees can build up sick days at one per month of employment, let them accrue and be paid for half of what went unused when they leave the lottery. Unused vacation time can be built up in a similar manner, and employees can be paid for up to three years of accrued time when they resign.

An independent third party will conduct a study of the policies, comparing them with those in the private and public sectors and report by July 1, Bottorf said.

Tennessee’s sick leave and vacation policy is similar to the one used by the Georgia Lottery.

When Paul left her position last year as head of the Georgia games for the same role in Tennessee, she was paid $125,139 for 24 weeks of vacation time — including 18 weeks rolled over from previous years.

Between Paul and three top executives who left Georgia for Tennessee with her, the Georgia games paid out just under $300,000 in accumulated unused vacation and sick time.

Bottorff’s decision to call for a review comes a week after state Sen. Steve Cohen, the Legislature’s leading lottery proponent, criticized the plan as “extraordinarily generous.”

Paul said the Tennessee leave policy was developed quickly during a rush to get the games going this year so employees who were hired in late 2003 would know what to expect.

“From the beginning, we intended it to be an interim policy,” she said.

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On the Net:

Tennessee Lottery: www.tnlottery.com

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Information from: The Tennessean, www.tennessean.com