Drafter
Clerk 08/09/2012
Title
AN ORDINANCE relating to expansion of the options available to county employees when donating or receiving donation of accrued sick time due to major illness; and amending Ordinance 12014, Section 22, as amended, and K.C.C 3.12.223 and Ordinance 12014, Section 5, as amended, and K.C.C. 3.12.010.
Body
STATEMENT OF FACTS:
1. One of King County's organization wide goals is to provide superior customer service. This takes many forms from dealing with the public directly to providing good research, analytical, and other work protecting public assets and the public interest. The most-valuable component to that is the county's most-valuable assets, which are its employees .
2. Employees account for the vast majority of the cost of almost all county departments and our employees are the resource we most often use to protect public health and safety. We cannot accomplish the county's goals without a stable, secure, and highly skilled workforce.
3. County employees are currently allowed to donate up to twenty-five hours of accrued sick leave and an unlimited amount of vacation leave to other employees facing a loss of income related to exhausted leave balances.
4. In cases of catastrophic illness, employees may not be able to maintain a steady income and maintain their health insurance coverage because of exhausted leave balances; and individual departments many times are not large enough to have enough employees available to donate additional hours.
5. It is in the county's interest to allow catastrophically sick employees to focus on getting well, instead of losing their income and medical benefits.
6. Allowing additional hours to be donated will likely have minimal additional financial cost to the county; however, it will allow the county to better provide for our employees.
BE IT ORDAINED BY THE COUNCIL OF KING COUNTY:
SECTION 1. Ordinance 12014, Section 22, as amended, and K.C.C. 3.12.223 are each hereby amended to rea...

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