Staff photo / Ed Runyan ... A Mahoning County sheriff’s deputy stands in a courtroom in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court last week watching the sentencing hearing for Carlos Herring, whose attorney was Jeff Kurz. Three deputies were among the top 10 earners in county government last year because of the severance they received when they retired.

YOUNGSTOWN –Tools on the internet such as Openpayrolls.com allow a person to view salaries of individuals working for government agencies, such as counties across the United States.

It provides eye-popping numbers, like the highest-paid employees working for Mahoning County, for instance. The website shows some workers are hauling in more than $200,000 in a year. But like any tool, it has limitations.

The Vindicator recently started with an Openpayrolls report and then asked the Mahoning County Auditor’s Office for the top 10 salaries of 2022 and a breakdown of each payout.

We found that one employee made more than $200,000 last year, a captain with the sheriff’s office who made $215,759. But the breakdown also showed that Capt. Stephen McGeary’s “gross income” of $215,759 was boosted by $106,046 in a one-time severance payment resulting from him retiring from the sheriff’s office in January 2022.

The veteran employee earned $85,252 in regular wages, almost exactly $13,000 in overtime, $1,000 for a standard clothing allowance and $10,152 in a category called “cashout.”

Chief Deputy William Cappabianca of the sheriff’s office explained that severance category at the sheriff’s office is the money paid to an employee who retires, including accumulated vacation time, which is paid at 100%; and accumulated sick time, which is paid at 60% of the amount accrued.

The “cash out” category is the amount a sheriff’s employee is paid to cash out his or her accumulated overtime compensation, Cappabianca said.

An example of when overtime is worked is when a deputy has to guard an inmate at the hospital because the inmate has an illness. “Those are not positions you staff for,” Cappabianca said. “You try, but sometimes your staffing is not there so you have to staff that with overtime.

“A deputy sheriff can work that, regardless of rank, and take it in pay and / or accumulated time. So they could take a day off later in the year or they took the overtime in their pay. That is called accumulated time.”

The severance category is for all accumulated time an employee has on the books, such as vacation and sick time, Cappabianca said.

“When they leave here (retire), they have to leave with a zero balance because it is all of the time they have accumulated. An example is for someone who never took vacation, accumulated their vacation, when they leave they get paid for their vacation,” he said.

“There is also sick time they accumulate here. In their collective bargaining agreement, they are allowed to cash 60% of the value of their accumulated sick time.”

He continued, “The three who are in the top 10 will not be anywhere near the top 10 next year. The figure is high for those three because they are retiring.”

The collective bargaining agreement grants a new deputy two weeks of vacation, three weeks after six years, four weeks after 11 years, five weeks after 16 years, and six weeks after 21 years. After 23 years of service, an employee acquires an additional day of vacation per year.

Employees accrue sick time at the rate of 4.6 hours every two weeks, or about 120 hours worth per year.

If a deputy retires / rehires, he gets two weeks of vacation each of his or her five years of retire/rehire time. It does not carry over from year to year, according to the 2022 collective bargaining agreement.

OTHER TOP EARNERS

In addition to McGeary, two other sheriff’s employees are in the county’s top 10 for last year: Lt. John Boggs, who earned $74,797 in regular wages in 2022 but had a gross payout of $160,814; and Deputy Earl Neff, who earned $60,736 in regular wages but had a payout of $127,969.

Boggs received severance of $73,487 and a “cash out” of $7,684. Neff received severance of $61,279 and no cash out. Both men received the standard $1,000 uniforms allowance.

McGeary, Boggs and Neff retired in 2022, and all three were rehired the next day under the retire/rehire program that has been in effect at the sheriff’s office since 2019.

McGeary led all county employees with his $215,759 gross compensation, followed by Rona Curtis, assistant director at Mahoning County Children Services, at $192,215 in gross compensation. She also retired in 2022 and received $96,805 in severance but was not rehired.

Mahoning County Engineer Pat Ginnetti, who is also the commissioners-appointed county sanitary engineer, was No. 3 with a total compensation of $162,323. He earned $124,769 as elected county engineer and $36,000 as sanitary engineer. In the second role, he is in charge of county sewer and water services.

Boggs is No. 4 on the list, followed by William Whitacre, superintendent of the Mahoning County Board of Developmental Disabilities. No. 6 is former Mahoning County Children Services executive director Randy Muth.

No. 7 is former county prosecutor Paul Gains. No. 8 is Neff, and No. 9 is Mahoning County Mental Health and Recovery Board executive director Duane Piccirilli. Mahoning County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Linette Stratford rounds out the list at No. 10.

SHERIFF GREENE

Mahoning County Sheriff Jerry Greene said looking at just the total payout for his employees listed on sites such as Openpayrolls is misleading because it does not explain the reason for the high number.

The “gross” payout for his three employees was a one-time payout that an employee receives upon retirement and frequently indicates the employee did not use much of their vacation time or sick time.

Pointing to the severance payout to one of the three employees, Greene said: “A majority of that … is going to be sick time cashed out at 60%. If it’s a person who hasn’t used much sick time during their career, their cash out is going to be massive.”

Greene noted of Neff and the other two: “Earl has worked his (butt) off, had a ton of time. That is all time they earned. They worked all of those hours.”

Greene said each of the three employees in the top 10 was a retire/rehire, but each of those employees would have received all of the amounts listed even if they had not been rehired.

“The retire / rehire has no bearing on the amount of money they received,” he said. “It just means they are coming back the following year at 10% less. By law, when they retire, they have to cash everything out because they are done.”

Greene said he implemented the retire / rehire program because of the number of people who were leaving the sheriff’s office. He said he thinks he lost close to 40 people the year before he implemented retire/rehire.

Cappabianca said during the COVID years, “no one” was entering law enforcement but added numbers are starting to “pick up.” He said the Youngstown State University police academy can hold 30 people, but the classes have only been about half full.

“People are retiring in masses because they were ready to retire and just didn’t want to do law enforcement anymore,” he said. “That’s how retire / rehire was introduced — to get people to stay here. It’s a wonderful thing because we are able to keep seasoned, well trained law enforcement officers working for us. Without that program, we would have been up a creek without a paddle.”

The retire / rehire program allows the sheriff’s office to keep a retire / rehire an additional five years. Such a person cannot get a second severance payout and is paid 10% less than they made before they retired. They cannot accumulate sick, vacation or other accumulated time as a retire / rehire.

Most sheriff’s employees who retire / rehire do so at 30 years of service but some do it at 25 years. A person can also stay beyond 30 years and not enter the retire / rehire program, Cappabianca said.

erunyan@vindy.com