The head of the District of Columbia police complaints board awarded an extra four weeks of vacation to a top lawyer because he had an Ivy League law degree and could have earned twice as much money in the private sector, according to a D.C. inspector general report obtained by The Examiner.
The inspector general concluded that the practice violated D.C. Code and recommended that it be immediately halted.
Yale Law School graduate Thomas Sharp’s annual salary dropped from $191,000 to $95,000 when he left Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering to take the job as deputy director of the Office of Police Complaints in 2002.
Sharp’s annual leave dropped from four weeks to three weeks. To make up for it, his bosses approved the extra 28 days of leave annually, citing “administrative discretion.”
D.C. Inspector General Charles Willoughby wrote in his decision: “I don’t believe it is reasonable to conclude that permitting an employee to earn administrative leave because the employee lacked the annual leave available to him in the private sector firm would be considered … an acceptable exercise of discretion in granting administration leave.”
