LOUISVILLE, Ky. — If you work for the city of Louisville, you could soon get 12 weeks of paid leave after the birth of a child or after an adoption.
Councilwoman Jessica Green of district 1 is learning how to balance life with her four-month-old.
"He is well accustomed to a camera, a zoom light, FaceTime. This is the world he's growing up in so he loves it," Green said.
She will never forget the September night she was voting on the Mayor Greg Fischer no-confidence debate during a long virtual meeting because that is when her water broke.
"I texted everybody like I'm here on the bed in absolute pain," Green recalled.
While council members are working from home, some of them have babies in their laps.
"Trying to just really juggle sort of the needs of being exhausted, having a brand new person that needs you all the time for everything, and being a good employee," Councilwoman Cassie Chambers Armstrong of district 8 said.
Armstrong has a 10-week-old so for her the parental paid leave is personal.
"Right now city employees could use sick leave or vacation time or they could take unpaid leave, and there are a lot of sort of cobble together yourself type options and these fall short for a number of reasons," Armstrong said.
Mothers and fathers with new additions to their family would be granted 12-weeks of paid leave.
"The burden of trying to figure out do I have to decide that I'm going to spend time with my child or do I have to work because I can't afford any other things," Green said. "It is so important for parents to be able to have time to bond with their children."
If the ordinance passes it may come with a cost to taxpayers. The Office of Management and Budget looked into it in January. The summary of its study said in part, "The estimated cost of the benefit would be a little less than $4.4 million with a likely range from $2.8 million to $6 million depending on the level of backfill overtime required."
"The numbers we're seeing they don't account for any of the benefits that we know come along with paid leave and I'm talking just the dollars benefits in terms of decrease turnover, the ability to recruit, more qualified employees, more productive workers and more workforce type arguments," Armstrong said.
Metro Council members discussed the proposed ordinance during a committee meeting on Tuesday. Green and Armstrong said the next goal is to get it passed as soon as possible.
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