IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) -- Iowa prison and parole supervisors who were laid off under former Gov. Chet Culver's administration have been paid nearly $500,000 in back pay and counting after a state panel ruled their firings were improper, records show.
The largest payout was to James Twedt, a senior parole judge who was paid $205,000 in back salary and benefits and reinstated to his job Dec. 5, according to data obtained by The Associated Press under the open records law.
After Twedt was laid off in March 2010, he practiced law in his hometown of Roland, north of Des Moines. The 25-year state employee said Tuesday he made no apologies for accepting the taxpayer-funded back pay and that he was glad to be back overseeing parole revocation hearings for the state.
"I was employed with certain expectations and rights and my rights were violated," said Twedt, 60. "I would say that it turned out the way it should have."
The Public Employment Relations Board ruled in August that 18 supervisors, mostly former prison guards who became managers, should have been given "bumping rights" if they had more seniority than union workers when they were let go. The board ordered state officials to craft remedies to make each employee whole.
The employees had been members of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the state's largest public employees union, before they accepted promotions to management positions. Union contracts and a state rule allowed them to retain their seniority if downsizing became necessary.
But with state agencies facing deep budget cuts in 2009, Culver and AFSCME reached an agreement to save the jobs of 479 union members facing layoffs in exchange for five unpaid furlough days and a suspension in contributions to workers' retirement savings plans. The deal specified that any supervisors facing layoffs would not be able to bump union employees.
The supervisors filed grievances alleging their layoffs, which started in December 2009, were improper and PERB agreed. Lawyers for the union and the state argued the new contract should have superseded previous rules.
Rather than appeal, Gov. Terry Branstad's administration instead opted to pay up and has been trying to calculate how much in wages, medical and retirement benefits each employee lost for their time out of work, minus any unemployment benefits they received.
Ten employees, including Twedt, have been given sums. The others' compensation was smaller than Twedt's because they had already returned to lower-level state jobs after their layoffs, so they spent less time out of work and lost less money. The state's cost also includes back payroll taxes it paid.
The state has also paid one retiree $43,000 and agreed to pay another at least $53,000 but continues to work out the details of her claim and hasn't paid it yet, said Caleb Hunter, a spokesman for the Department of Administrative Services. He released a spreadsheet showing the payouts to date after an AP request. The Department of Corrections refused to answer questions about the status of the payouts.
State lawyers and six other employees continue to haggle over the details of their cases in front of PERB. The issues in dispute include how to reimburse retirement benefits they would not have received had they not been laid off and whether four employees who could not bump others should have been given opportunities for demotion or not, a PERB official said. The board held a hearing earlier this month and is scheduled to receive briefs in coming days.
Danny Homan, president of AFSCME Council 61, said Twedt's payout was "a heck of a lot more than most of my members make." The union believes he and other supervisors lost their union bumping rights when they accepted management positions, and Homan criticized the Branstad administration for not appealing the ruling.
"I'm disappointed the PERB board made the ruling they made and I'm disappointed the current administration chose to accept that ruling instead of appealing," he said. "I suppose they chose not to appeal this because it was done under the Culver administration and they can sit back and blame Chet Culver."
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