Your Tax Dollars NOT at Work (for Nine Years)

Those people at the Enquirer sure know how to write a gripping headline that grabs your attention (/sarcasm):

Cops asked to investigate payroll case
9 years of pay for no work
By Gregory Korte

Cincinnati City Manager David E. Rager has ordered a criminal investigation into how a city sanitation supervisor was able to keep her nearly $40,000-a-year job without doing any work for nine years.

Christine M. Wells-Hicks, 51, of Westwood, is listed on the city’s payroll as a cleaning/service supervisor in the Neighborhood Operations Division. She made $39,911 last year, according to city payroll records.

Those records show that Wells-Hicks joined the city in 1984. She was injured in a 1996 auto accident and was unable to work.

When the city denied her disability claim because her accident wasn’t work-related, she sued. That lawsuit was settled in 2002, court records show, but a copy of the settlement wasn’t available Tuesday.

Wells-Hicks’ lawyer, Carol Wood, said the settlement required the city to keep her on the payroll while officials worked to find her another job. But Wood said she would not comment on why that never happened.

“My client has done nothing wrong. She has not been interviewed,” Wood said. “Any payments to Christine Wells have been the result of a written settlement agreement among all of the parties.”

City spokeswoman Meg Olberding would not disclose details of that settlement and would not explain why the city manager referred the incident to the Police Department.

Opponents of privatizing city services should be asked this question: “When’s the last time you heard about someone at a private company getting away with being paid for not coming to work for nine years?”
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Dec. 22: Outside the Beltway Jammer.