Audrey Caro Gomez
Linn County and eight other counties can opt out of Oregon’s paid sick leave law because the law is an unfunded mandate, Circuit Court Daniel Murphy ruled Dec. 8.
Oregon’s paid sick leave law, which was passed in 2015 and went into effect Jan. 1, has applied to employers who have 10 or more employees, with exception of Portland where the threshold is 6.
Under the law, full-time, part-time, temporary and seasonal workers accrue sick time, according to the Bureau of Labor and Industries.
The county argued that under Article XI, Section 15 of the Oregon constitution it is not required to comply with the paid sick leave law because it “compels Plaintiffs to expend money on a new program or increases a level of service for an existing program without providing Plaintiff’s constitutionally adequate reimbursement.”
During a Nov. 23 hearing, attorneys for both sides debated the definitions of the words “program” and “service.”
In his ruling, Judge Daniel Murphy said the the plaintiff counties cited the Merriam Webster Unabridged Dictionary definitions.
“This court is not sure that we need to even go there in that the criteria for program in Section 15 appears clear and unambiguous,” Murphy said. “However, should an appellate court find that resort to a dictionary definition is useful or even required, in this analysis this court finds the Merriam definition instructive.”
Murphy also addressed the issue of whether the sick leave law would cost Linn County more than one-hundredth of a 1 percent of the county’s 2016-17 budget.
While the county submitted a declaration, the state did not “know if they dispute the amount claimed by plaintiffs,” according to the ruling.
In September, Dave Alderman, Linn County accounting officer, stated in a court filing that the county has taken actions to implement the new law.
“We have modified our payroll system to meet the requirements of the new law, which increased the number of employees we accrue and track sick leave for by 154 employees,” Alderman said.
He said complying with the law required the county to “plan and implement a new procedure to track and set up non-employees in our payroll system when staffing is done through temporary staffing agencies.”
This process added several hours each month to payroll staff’s workload, he added.
Staff used the actual number of hours worked by part-time hourly staff in 2015 to calculate hours that would have been accrued, according to the document. The result was an additional 1,725 hours, with a value of $41,067.
“This amount is well above one-hundredth of 1 percent of the county’s 2016-2017 budget,” Alderman said.
“This is not a case where the answer is crystal clear,” Murphy said. “However the court is persuaded that the law defines the Sick Leave law as a program and by Section 15 of Article XI the program may not increase costs to the counties.”
The other counties submitted similar declarations, Murphy said.
Murphy said the plaintiff may submit judgments and “a judgment enjoining the state from enforcing the sick leave law against the plaintiffs.” The judgments must be submitted no later than Jan. 8, 2017.