My county recently had a department head leave. Her status for the past few years, just how many is murky, has been as an exempt employee. She has been paid a salary and not turned in a time sheet. Now she has sent a written demand for three weeks accrued vacation.

Our policy manual has a method where a "regular" employee may accrue and be paid for vacation, but not exempt employees. In any event the policy requires that the regular employee turn in time sheets so that we may calculate how much vacation has been used.

Contractually I don't see that we ower her anything. Are there any FSLA pitfall I need to be wary of?

Most department heads are going to be exempt, although it could depend on the specific job duties she held, whether she was truly a lowly worker with a lofty title. Assuming you are confident that she was properly classified as FLSA-exempt, any problem won't be an FLSA issue. You'll want to also be sure about any possible equal protection issues --how have others in her situation been treated in the past?

If you are not sure she was properly classified (and the rules have changed recently, so you will want to know if she was exempt under both prior and current rules), a good FLSA resource to check out is the DOL's site---

http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/flsa/

Law aside, I was unaware that there was a county in Texas that does not give at least some accruable vacation time to all full-time workers, FLSA-exempt or not [except elected officials].

[This message was edited by A. Diamond on 07-06-05 at .]

As usual, Ann's advice is concise and correct. If your reading of the county's contractual compensation provisions is correct, payment of the "extra" compensation to which the former department head is claiming entitlement could violate art. 3, section 53 of the constitution. On the other hand, if this is the first department head who's been told "no" under these facts, perhaps her release of the county from any equal protection claim would provide the additional consideration necessary to support the transaction from a contractual and state constitutional perspective.