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SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, left state service with two things: a federal corruption investigation and more than $50,000 in pay for vacation time she accrued but never took.

State payroll records reviewed by The Times show Williamson used approximately $30,000 in unused vacation time to remain on California’s payroll through Jan. 31 — seven weeks after Newsom’s office indicated she had departed — before collecting an additional $22,000 lump-sum payout for the hours she had left.

Large cash-outs for departing state workers with hundreds of hours of time off on the books have been a recurring issue in California. The state’s unfunded liability for vacation and other leave owed to employees has ballooned in recent years to $5.6 billion, fueled by generous time-off provisions and a long-standing failure to enforce policies that cap most employees’ vacation balances at 640 hours.

Many state workers accumulate large balances of unused vacation after decades of being on the government payroll. The typical public employee retires with more than two decades in public service, according the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. Their unused time off is paid when they leave state employment at their final rate of pay.

Williamson, however, amassed 462 hours of unused leave in less than two years on the job. She earned $19,612 a month as the governor’s chief of staff.

John Moorlach, director at the conservative think tank the Center for Public Accountability at the California Policy Center, said that a job like Williamson had probably involved incredibly long workdays but that the pace in which employees accumulate days off is a major financial burden.

“A normal blue-collar worker would say, ‘Really? Really?“” said Moorlach, a former Republican state senator from Orange County. “You don’t find this perk in the private sector.”

Williamson notified Newsom in November 2024 that she was under federal investigation and was put on paid administrative leave through Dec. 16, the governor’s office said.

Federal charges against Williamson, which were filed in November 2025, allege she siphoned $225,000 out of a dormant state campaign account belonging to gubernatorial hopeful Xavier Becerra and illegally claimed $1 million in luxury handbags and travel as business expenses on her tax returns. She pleaded not guilty to the charges.

A status conference in Williamson’s case was moved to April 16 after she recently underwent a successful liver transplant and due to the large volume of discovery — more than 280,000 pages so far — according to court records filed last month.

Williamson’s attorney, McGregor Scott, did not respond to a request for comment.

State payroll records show Williamson earned $40,000 in regular pay in 2025, which the state controller’s office said included her December 2024 and January 2025 paychecks. The governor’s office said Williamson’s December 2024 paycheck included 11 days of paid administrative leave, and the remainder of both paychecks was covered by her unused leave.

With her final cash-out of $22,000 in remaining time off, she made a total of $62,000 last year — all tied to administrative leave and unused vacation time rather than time worked.

“That’s shocking, honestly,” said Assemblyman Josh Hoover (R-Folsom), adding that stockpiled vacation time overall is something the state Legislature should look into.

The state paid $453 million in unused leave benefits to state workers in 2025. That was an average of more than $20,000 to the 21,000 employees who received a lump-sum check. The amount paid to departing or retiring state workers has steadily increased each year. In 2024, the state paid $413 million for unused time off.

“Obviously, employees are an important part of our state and they accrue vacation time,” Hoover said. “But, if this is something being used to pad people’s salaries … we need to look into that and possibly reform that.”

Last year, 80 state employees took home at least $250,000 in unused time off, and 1,081 employees were paid more than $100,000. Those numbers have been increasing each year. For example, the state paid 16 state workers more than $250,000 for unused time off in 2010, and 309 employees were paid more than $100,000.

In 2024, the state paid out a record $1.2 million to a prison supervising dentist for unused time off. Last year, the top amount paid for unused leave was about $650,000 to an assistant fire chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The state owed nearly $5.6 billion to state workers for unused vacation and other leave benefits in 2024, according to the most recent financial accounting report issued by the state controller’s office. Although that unfunded liability held steady when compared with 2023, it has risen sharply from pre-pandemic amounts.

In 2019, the state owed $3.9 billion for employees’ unused time off before COVID-19 curtailed travel and work-from-home policies resulted in fewer workers taking time off. State employees have argued that under-staffing at state agencies can make it difficult to take vacations.

Nick Schroeder, a policy analyst at the nonpartisan California Legislative Analyst’s Office, said the state has plans to reduce unfunded liabilities for pensions and retiree healthcare, but that isn’t the case with unused time off.

“There isn’t a plan to address it,” Schroeder said.

When an employee retires with a large leave balance, the department where that person worked last is on the hook for the amount.

“It can be a big effect on that individual department’s budget,” Schroeder said.

During budget deficits — including in the current fiscal year — the state has cut employee pay or deferred annual raises in exchange for additional days off, a strategy that helps balance budgets but also adds to workers’ growing vacation balances.

In Newsom’s January budget proposal, which estimated a $3-billion deficit, the governor recommended providing $91 million in ongoing funding to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to help the prison system pay departing employees for their unused time off. The department said that from 2020 to 2025, it paid about $130 million annually on average to employees leaving state service, according to a Legislative Analyst’s Office report.

When employees cash out banked leave, the state pays them not only for the hours they have accumulated, but also for the additional vacation and holidays they would have earned had they taken that time off.

That means a person with 640 hours of vacation would also be paid for all of the vacation and holidays they would have earned had they taken those 80 days off. Each hour of leave is paid based on an employee’s final salary — not what they were earning when the time was accrued.

Most private-sector employers cap vacation accrual between 40 and 400 hours and stop employees from earning additional time once they reach those limits. Some companies have moved in the opposite direction, adopting “unlimited paid time off” policies. Under those systems, employees do not accumulate vacation days that can be banked or cashed out, but critics say the policies can lead to workers taking less time off because there is no guaranteed number of days and employees may feel pressure not to appear absent.

Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., said there appears to be little appetite in the state Capitol to address California’s burgeoning vacation liability.

“This problem is systemic within California government and no one seems willing to take it on,” Coupal said. “At the same time, they are clamoring that there is a budget crisis. I suspect they will continue to kick the can down the road.”

President Trump announced on social media Friday that Richard Grenell, the former ambassador to Germany who Trump appointed as president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts more than a year ago, is stepping down. Grenell will be replaced by Matt Floca, the vice president of facilities operations at the center.

Change has been the only constant at the Kennedy Center since Trump fired the center’s board in early February of last year and had himself appointed chairman. A week later amid mass artist defections that included Shonda Rhimes and Renée Fleming, Trump appointed Grenell, a close ally, as interim executive director, a post Grenell held until now.

“Ric Grenell has done an excellent job in helping to coordinate various elements of the Center during the transition period, and I want to thank him for the outstanding work he has done,” Trump posted on Truth Social, adding that after an upcoming two-year closure for renovations, the center “will be, at its completion, the finest facility of its kind anywhere in the World!”

News of the center’s imminent closure came as a surprise to employees and arts fans still reeling from Trump’s announcement late last year that the board had voted to rename the venue the Trump-Kennedy Center, which prompted another wave of performance cancellations, including by composer Philip Glass. The Washington National Opera also announced in early January that it would leave the center.

Grenell’s tenure was marked by controversy every step of the way, which Grenell met with combative defiance, often slamming artists that criticized the center’s decisions. He also was known for not granting interviews to press that he deemed unfriendly, instead speaking on the record only to right-leaning news organizations.

The Kennedy Center did not respond to a request for comment on Grenell’s departure.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday the U.S. Postal Service is shielded from being sued even if its employees intentionally fail to deliver the mail.

In a 5-4 decision, the court said Congress in 1946 had barred lawsuits “arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter,” and that includes mail that is stolen or misdirected by postal employees.

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the court, said the law broadly bars complaints involving lost or missing mail.

“A ‘miscarriage of mail’ includes failure of the mail to arrive at its intended destination, regardless of the carrier’s intent or where the mail goes instead,” he said.

The ruliing is a setback but not a final defeat for Lebene Konan, a Texas real estate agent who is Black. She had sued contending white postal carriers refused to deliver her mail to two houses where she rented rooms.

She did not live at either property but said she stayed there “from time to time.”

She first complained to the post office in Euless, Texas, after she learned the mail carrier had changed the listed owner on a central postal box from Konan’s name to a tenant’s name.

After two years of frustration, she sued the United States in 2022 alleging the Postal Service had intentionally and wrongly withheld her mail. She sought damages for emotional distress, a loss of rental income and for racial discrimination.

Her claim of racial bias was dismissed by a federal judge and a U.S. appeals court and did not figure in the Supreme Court’s decision.

However, the 5th Circuit Court ruled she could go forward with her suit alleging she was a victim of intentional misconduct on the part of postal employees.

The Biden and Trump administrations urged the court to hear the case and to reject lawsuits against the Postal Service based on claims of intentional wrongdoing.

They said the 5th Circuit’s ruling could “open the floodgates of litigation.” They noted the Postal Service delivers about 113 billion pieces of mail per year and receives about 335,000 complaints over lost mail and other matters.

“We hold that the postal exception covers suits against the United States for the intentional nondelivery of mail,” Thomas said. “We do not decide whether all of Konan’s claims are barred.”

Joining Thomas to limit lawsuits against the Postal Service were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the law refers to a “loss” or “miscarriage” of the mail, which suggests negligence.

“Today, the court holds that one exception — the postal exception — prevents individuals from recovering for injuries based on a postal employee’s intentional misconduct, including when an employee maliciously withholds their mail,” Sotomayor wrote.

Joining her were Justices Elena Kagan, Neil M. Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson.