Vacation Days

LONDON - Britta Niehoff is about to join millions of other Europeans on her annual vacation, with the kind of time off and benefits that most Americans only dream of receiving from their employers. Like many Europeans, including part-time workers, Niehoff gets six weeks a year, not the measly two to four with which most Americans must be content. What's more, her employer gives her a bonus of a half-month's pay to help finance her vacation. If that seems generous, the fact is many Europeans get bonuses twice as large.

Sarah Boone knows how to work hard, run hard and kick back. She also knows what to wear. By day, the business-location consultant for the Anne Arundel Economic Development Corporation is suited up in understated elegance. But get her in a tropical clime, and she's strictly Tommy Bahama. In fact, when Boone and her family vacationed in Jamaica last Thanksgiving, "We all wore our Tommy Bahama outfits. My sons thought it was cool, and my husband even wears it. It is absolutely, positively my breakaway from the work routine," says Boone, who lives in Annapolis.

Former Hampstead Town Manager Neil M. Ridgely, who left the post in January after a spate of conflicts with Mayor Christopher M. Nevin, is suing the town for up to $20,000 in unpaid vacation compensation.Ridgely filed suit this week in Carroll County District Court seeking three times what he is owed for 41 unused vacation days -- $6,702 -- because previous requests for reimbursement were ignored by the mayor, said Robert J. Lynott, Ridgely's attorney.State law allows plaintiffs to seek triple their unpaid compensation, Lynott said yesterday.

Harford County's school board has agreed to pay more than $271,000 in a settlement to end the contract of school Superintendent Jeffery N. Grotsky -- a deal that triggered criticism yesterday from the county executive and other local officials.School officials said yesterday that the settlement includes his annual salary of $107,100 for the remaining two years of his contract, $46,000 of unused sick leave, $7,775 for remaining vacation time, $520 a month in health insurance payments until August and a $375-a-month car allowance until June 8.Harford County Executive Eileen M. Rehrmann -- who was not involved in the financial negotiations to end Grotsky's tenure -- expressed concern about the amount of the payment.

WASHINGTON -- Fear has been called the aerobics of the mind. If that is so, all who think there can and should be an entitlement to economic security should tone up their minds by focusing on what is happening in the streets of French cities, and on what has happened on the streets where pickets walked for 17 months outside Caterpillar works in the United States.The future of all unreformed welfare states can be seen through the smoke from fires set by people protesting the French government's ''austerity'' plans, meaning plans to curtail entitlements to public jobs and benefits.

Some Harford County parents think a proposed five-day limit on excused absences for family vacations, which has been proposed by a county school committee, is too strict.Patricia Jones plans to take her children, two first-graders, a fifth-grader and an eighth-grader, out of school for six days in November so that the family can accompany her husband, an insurance broker, on a business trip to Europe.Under the proposed five-day limit, her children's sixth day out of school would not be excused.

Former Baltimore County Executive Roger B. Hayden received a $23,383 cash payment for 77 unused vacation days when he left office, even though elected officials have no set vacations.The payment was processed routinely as part of the final Hayden administration payroll submitted Dec. 2, his last full day on the job.During Mr. Hayden's four-year term, he saved the county $66,000 and lowered his eventual pension by accepting a salary of less than $80,000, while the official salary for executive rose to $100,700.

When people retire, many of them receive a gold watch. If you retire from the Carroll County public school system, you can count on more than that: A hefty cash payment consisting of accumulated unused sick leave, accrued at your highest rate of pay.When R. Edward Shilling retires today as Carroll's superintendent after 30 total years in the county system, he will receive $94,401 -- $63,066 for 239.5 unused sick days and $31,335 for 59.5 unused vacation days....

Students get awards for good attendance.Carroll Schools Superintendent R. Edward Shilling will get one, too. It amounts to $94,401.That's the sum Mr. Shilling has earned for unused sick days and vacation over his 30 years in Carroll County schools.Good health brings rewards to all Carroll school employees. Over the years, unions have negotiated into their contracts clauses that allow members to get paid for all unused sick days when they retire, at the rate of 50 percent of their salary at retirement.

Anne Arundel County students will probably lose a day of spring break and have three days in June tacked onto the school year to make up for four days school was closed due to winter weather.Interim Superintendent Carol S. Parham will recommend that the school board adopt that plan tonight rather than add four days to the end of the school year. Students missed eight days in January and February, but only four emergency closing days were built into the school calendar. The state requires students to have 180 days of school.