[media-credit name=’BRYAN FAUST/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]University of Wisconsin employees will now have to provide a certified doctor's note in order to take paid sick leave from the university for more than five consecutive full working days, the Board of Regents unanimously decided Friday.

The revised policy comes after it was revealed former Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Paul Barrows took months of sick leave from the university without a valid doctor's note, and was allowed to do so by UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley.

"The committee felt it was important to send a very strong and clear signal on this issue," Regent Charles Pruitt, Chair of the Business & Finance Committee, said. "Therefore we adopted the option that would require certification after five days and at the same time authorizing institutions to require written certification at any time if they doubt sick leave is being used [properly]."

Pruitt told his fellow board members the committee based their new sick leave policy on the "private sector model," which they discerned from a survey of sick-leave policies practiced by private employers across the state.

"I think the substantial majority of those private employers require a five-day trigger," he said. "If we were interested in reaching as a high a standard as seemed appropriate and reasonable [then] a five-day trigger was the right place to go."

Regent Thomas Loftus, also of the Business & Finance Committee, said the new policy spreads the accountability on documenting sick leave, as opposed to the former policy where the onus was on the supervisor rather than the employee to ensure legitimacy.

"What we tried to do here is put some of the responsibility, at least equally shared, but more of the responsibility [than before] on the employee who is calling in sick," Loftus said.

Also validated by the regents following Thursday's meeting of the Business & Finance Committee was a seven-point resolution introduced by System President Kevin Reilly to improve the system's internal audit function.

"I think that this is a very good step forward, it's another step in the reform process and I hope all of the regents support it," Loftus said.

The resolution officially recognizes the Business & Finance Committee as the audit branch of the Board of Regents, and thus changes their name to the "Business, Finance & Audit Committee," effective at the November regents meeting due to necessary changes in the bylaws.

Also affected by the resolution is the role of the committee's vice chair who will now become the official audit liaison. The resolution grants authority to the auditor to work directly with either the system president or the Board of Regents.

Reacting to the results of an audit conducted by the system earlier this year, the regents also voted in support of heightening measures to safeguard the social-security numbers of UW students and employees system-wide.

UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley told the regents his university stopped including social-security numbers on identification cards nine years ago, but could not guarantee all of the old cards have been removed from use.

"We did not require people who had older ID's to go back and get them changed," Wiley said. "Gradually over time they are all being changed, but I can't promise you that there's no one on campus who has an old ID with a social security number."

Regent Jesus Salas expressed a particular interest in the topic, asking both Wiley and Ron Yates, director of the UW System Office of Operations Review and Audit, a series of questions.

"The privacy act that we're all referring to and that you deliberated on [Thursday] was passed in 1974," Salas said. "The concerns that we have over violations of privacy [and] ID theft have greatly grown during that period of time — I'm just really concerned about that."

Felons

In his opening report, Regent President David Walsh outlined a plan to address the concerns from state legislators and the general public concerning the payment of several employees even after being convicted of felons.

The UW System and the Board of Regents have come under pressure in recent months for a system which Walsh acknowledged is "broken" and does not move quickly enough to terminate convicted felons when appropriate.

"What's broken is that we're not clear on the definition of just cause, what's broken is that we don't have a prompt appeal process and that's especially important and compounded by the fact that we do pay our employees even after termination unlike any other state institution, unlike any other business that I'm aware of," he said.

Walsh said he will appoint a committee and ask for the involvement of chancellors and council to report to the Board of Regents with suggested changes to the policy.

The state legislature, Walsh said, may have to do their part as well, as he said Wisconsin is one of only five states in which the conviction of a felony cannot necessarily be considered just cause for termination.

"To a person, I think everybody agrees that we do not condone the kind of criminal conduct we have been criticized for not moving more swiftly on," Walsh said. "What we need to do is make decisions, execute on them, ask for changes, so we can stand up and say we did our part."