City May Go Electric With Pay Stubs For Municipal Employees

By ARI PAUL

The City Council is considering a bill that would replace paper pay stubs with electronic ones for municipal workers, with its supporters saying that it will save the city money and help protect the environment.

The Chief-Leader/Alana Marcu PROBLEMS TO SOLVE: Neil Matthew, the Deputy Executive Director for Payroll Operations at the Office of Payroll Administration, told the City Council that while his office supported switching to electronic pay stubs for city employees, a number of technological issues had to be resolved.

During a hearing of the Civil Service and Labor Committee April 28, administration officials said that they supported the measure, called Intro No. 702, though they had some concerns about its implementation.

Fewer Options Better

"The programming required to print all pay stubs or none is far less complicated than the re-programming that would be required to print pay stubs only for those employees who request them," said Neil Matthew, the Deputy Executive Director for Payroll Operations at the Office of Payroll Administration. "A re-programming effort of this scope will require an extended time-frame for implementation."

JESSICA LAPPIN: Green and a money-saver.

More than 70,000 city workers at 46 agencies can access their payroll information electronically, explained Annette Heintz, the Deputy Commissioner of Special Projects for the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications.

"The city plans on expanding the service, rolling out to an additional 30,000 employees in June and using additional technology to make the application available to employees at home, via the Internet," she said in her testimony.

She added that it would take until the middle of 2009 to integrate Department of Education employees into the New York City Automated Personnel System and that security concerns regarding the uniformed forces meant it would take more time to extend the option to police and correction officers, Emergency Medical Service personnel, firefighters, sanitation workers and Department of Investigation employees.

"Finally, while City University of New York community colleges are paid through the city treasury and would therefore be subject to the legislation, CUNY is developing its own system to incorporate personnel and payroll management for both senior and community colleges together," Ms. Heintz said. "We understand that CUNY has not yet determined a timetable for full implementation."

Safer Than Paper?

A representative of Talx, a company specializing in employee services, told the committee that in addition to saving money and paper, using electronic pay information was safer than having paper recordings, saying that the Better Business Bureau has stated that more identity theft occurs as the result of discarded.

If the bill becomes law, it would save the city 27 cents on each paycheck, amounting to $2 million a year, according to Manhattan Councilwoman Jessica Lappin, who introduced the bill.

She said she got the idea for the legislation after "talking to friends who work in the private sector and hearing about their companies going paperless and the savings that they realized as a result."

After the hearing, she indicated that the administration representatives raised concerns about the bill's implantation that she believed could be easily addressed.

"They agreed with the concept of the bill," she said. "They're already moving in that direction, which is very positive. So it's just a question of coming up with a timetable that's realistic and workable."