The V.I. Inspector General's Office will examine retired Territorial Court Presiding Judge Verne Hodge's request for $400,000 in accumulated annual and sick leave.
"We're going to look at the numbers and look at the law and the Attorney General's opinion," Inspector General Steven Van Beverhoudt said Thursday. The action comes at the request of Sen. Anne Golden.
In an interview Thursday night, Hodge confirmed that he already has received a partial payment.
"They made one installment," he said. "It was around $50,000." After that, Finance Commissioner Bernice Turnbull asked for advice from Attorney General Iver Stridiron.
Turnbull said Thursday that "the review process has not been completed" despite Stridiron's position that the government should pay Hodge. She confirmed that "some monies were paid" to Hodge but would not give a figure.
Neither Hodge nor Turnbull has stated publicly the total number of hours for which Hodge is seeking compensation.
Hodge said "I was surprised, myself" when the total came back from the Finance payroll division after he retired. But he said he was able to avoid using his annual leave because he used "comp time" instead for days off. He said he put in a lot of overtime for which he could not be paid but for which he accrued "comp time."
In a letter to the inspector general, Golden asked him to "please convert 23 years of annual leave accumulated by the honorable judge into dollars. Is the $400,000 figure mathematically correct based on your conversion? Did the judge ever take any vacation in his 23 years on the bench? Was any sick leave ever used by the honorable judge in his 23 years on the bench?"
She also asked whether sick leave has ever been included in the lump sum paymenta to government employees who retire or otherwise leave their jobs. In all she had 11 items she asked the inspector general to consider.
Van Beverhoudt said some of Golden's concerns are legal questions which his office is not equipped to answer and he would refer Golden to the Legislature's legal counsel for those answers.
For his review, Van Beverhoudt said, he will contact Hodge, ask for records from Finance and review what was done with other judges who retired under the same law that Hodge is citing.
He said he hopes the review can be completed "within a few weeks – assuming I can get all the information."
