Question 1: Tell us what you found about the airport’s payroll.
Mukesh Patel left his job last March as the Chief Business Officer at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (making $264,000) to be the director of the San Jose airport.
We’ve found that he actually stopped working three months before then, though the city never told anyone. Mukesh Patel earned $70,698.24 in three months from late December 2023 to March 2024. A rate of $130 per hour according to our open records request.
Over a full year, that would be a $270,316 salary - slightly more money than Patel
ever made in the four full years he worked for Austin. Patel was getting paid more money not to work than he was to help run the airport.
Even after he was removed from the board of directors on the
airport’s website, he was still getting paid by the city.
And even after his first day of work at his new job in San Jose on
March 18, he still got paid by Austin until the end of the month. We asked the city why, they said...
We don’t have San Jose’s most recent payroll yet to see how much Patel is earning at his new job. But his predecessor made $352,000.
Question 2: What is paid leave normally used for?
It’s pretty broad. Department directors can grant paid leave for “any reason approved by the city manager.”
But the examples of potential reasons in the city’s personnel manual are only for a few hours or days. Voting in an election, donating blood, traveling for city business. It doesn’t say anything about taking months of paid leave at a time.
But it happens anyway. Last year we uncovered an arrangement where Assistant City Manager Rodney Gonzalez said he would retire in January but went on paid leave four months before then and kept getting his paycheck.
The city has 2,400 job vacancies. How about instead of paying people not to work, they use that money to hire someone who is working, or don’t spend the money at all.
Question 3: Take us through the rest of the payroll. How much did the city spend on paid leave last year?
The city spent $2.1 million on paid leave last year.
39 people earned $10,000 or more.
Austin Water spent the most of any agency ($325,000).
Austin Energy was paying out the highest hourly rates. Three top employees made almost $160 an hour. That’s 22 times the state minimum wage, not to work.
|
Austin Water
|
$ 325,634
|
|
Austin Energy
|
$ 287,453
|
|
Parks and Recreation
|
$ 205,395
|
|
Fire
|
$ 161,301
|
|
Emergency Medical Services
|
$ 128,839
|
Question 4: Who were some of the other top earners on paid leave?
The city spent $41,000 and $16,000 on paid leave for two Human Resources employees. They were indicted by a jury last summer for allegedly stealing thousands of dollars from the Austin school district, but a verdict hasn’t been reached yet.
Andrew Rivera from the Planning Department earned $30,000 on paid leave last year. He was
under investigation for making a Facebook post criticizing his boss’ telework rules.