Working for El Paso County sounds like a pretty cushy gig. County employees get 43 days off a year, or over 7 weeks of vacation and sick time per calendar year. Is that too many days off? That was the question before County Commissioner's Court during a special budget meeting this week.

The 28 holiday/vacation days and 15 sick-days a year is above the average days off available to employees in other counties. Commissioner Andrew Haggerty says they average a holiday and vacation mix of 25 days off. He said El Paso County needs to cut back a bit and be in-line with everyone else. He also wondered if they need to "mash our vacation days to the federal holidays and bank schedules," and decide what makes sense as a Court.

Commissioners Court has asked the County's Human Resources department to look at the total number of leave days employees have and get back to the Court with a recommendation on things like adjusting a sick leave policy. The County has more sick leave days on average than other counties, but that might change in the future, depending on what HR recommends to Commissioners Court.

Seven weeks of potential time off is a lot of time off. That's almost two months of taxpayer funded downtime for County employees. Perhaps it's time to seriously look at the burden on taxpayers who are paying for all that time off and require County employees to be at work more often.

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