A vote on the Bernalillo County (NM) Sick Leave Ordinance is on the agenda for today’s Board of County Commissioners meeting. The proposed ordinance applies to employers in the unincorporated limits of the County, which excludes the City of Albuquerque.
The County ordinance has the typical PSL architecture: employees accrue PSL at the rate of one hour for every 30 hours worked to a maximum of 56 hours annually. An employee can carryover up to 56 unused hours. It has some nuances, as most PSL laws do. In addition to including a broad definition of “family member,” this ordinance allows an employee to designate an addition individual to care for. It also allows a successful plaintiff to recover liquidated damages equal to “three times the value of the earned sick time accrued.”
While it is always a challenge to handicap the likelihood of a PSL ordinance passing, the stars seem aligned for this ordinance to pass. The five member Board of County Commissioners has four Democratic members., two of whom–the Chair and Vice-Chair–have sponsored this ordinance. I’ll blog tomorrow about the outcome in Bernalillo County today.