Paycheck

Two of the city's top financial officers are going into court in a dispute over the city controller's auditing powers, and taxpayers will pay the legal bills. City computer czar Eugene L. Cliett Jr. filed suit in Common Pleas Court this week to try to get his last paycheck released from the clutches of city Controller Joseph C. Vignola. Vignola put Cliett's $1,333 biweekly paycheck into his office safe two weeks ago in retaliation for Cliett's refusal to open financial records of the Philadelphia Computing Corp.

As long as mum's the word from Sheriff Ralph C. Passio III, there will be no paycheck Friday for his $26,500-a-year inspector, William Schwartz. Yesterday, City Controller Joseph C. Vignola said he was withholding Schwartz's biweekly paycheck until Passio tells him what the 10-year veteran of the sheriff's office has been doing lately to earn his city salary. Passio relieved Schwartz of all his duties March 12, after the FBI told the sheriff it had found that his department paid two private auto repair shops for work that was never done on 20 cars.

Well, as Bobby Bonilla always said, if you don't like the highest-paid player in baseball, just wait a few days. It will change. Only 94 days ago, it was Bonilla whose Mets contract (five years, $29.5 million) was supposed to be threatening the very survival of baseball, if not the entire universe. Now it is Ryne Sandberg who has taken over Bonilla's title as owner of baseball's most outrageous paycheck. Now it is Sandberg who has gotten the contract - a new four-year, $28.4 million extension from the Cubs - that's most guaranteed to cause baseball commissioner Fay Vincent to predict the end of the world.

Thursday is payday - normally a day to look forward to - for about 5,000 South Jersey employees of the General Electric Co.'s Aerospace Division. But since January, payday has not always been a happy day, some employees say. Rather, a rash of payroll mistakes has made it a day of frustration, heartburn and headaches. The former RCA Corp., including its South Jersey Aerospace Division facilities in Moorestown and Gibbsboro, merged with GE in June of 1986, and in January, GE began integrating the largely manual RCA payroll system into GE's computerized system.

John Warner didn't set out to be a cop. The 34-year-old Oaklyn resident had every intention of pursuing a career in automobile retailing after graduating from Peirce Junior College in 1975. But when he opened up a health club in Oaklyn in the early 1980s, the officers who came in as customers persuaded him to apply for a position on the local police force. "I was absolutely thrilled when they hired me," he said. " 'To protect and to serve' in my own home town - I was so proud.

Andrew Celwyn is co-owner of the Herbiary in Reading Terminal Market and Chestnut Hill With so much bad news about Philadelphia's budget woes, increased property taxes, and decrease of services, I was surprised that no one took notice of the good news that recently came out of City Hall. Granted, there was no news release by Mayor Nutter's office and I didn't hear any Council members crowing about it either, but not to worry. I'll let you in on this closely guarded secret. My wife and I jointly own a small business in Philadelphia, and as the bookkeeper, I need to keep track of what City Hall is doing.

It's called Time Out, but French director Laurent Cantet's unsettling film about a businessman between situations might well be called "Fake This Job and Love It. " Vincent (Aur?lien Recoing) resembles both Prince Albert of Monaco and a corporate executive. But he is a sham. Recently fired and too ashamed to admit it, Vincent constructs an alternative universe. To impress friends and family, he says he is a U.N. consultant in Geneva. He works harder to get the job description and language down than he would if he were actually employed.

Thousands of paychecks will be distributed to most municipal employees today, but a $1,333.90 check payable to city data-processing chief Eugene L. Cliett Jr. will remain locked in a drawer somewhere in the city controller's office. Controller Joseph C. Vignola yesterday ordered that Cliett's pay be withheld because of what Vignola contends is Cliett's refusal to cooperate with an audit of his department, the Office of Information Management (OIM). Cliett, who is a $55,000-a-year deputy finance director, last week turned away a consultant hired by Vignola to audit OIM. He notified Vignola that by law the controller's staff - and not a consultant - must conduct all audits.

The mother of William Gilliard III told him his night job selling children's books over the phone wouldn't amount to much. She'd tried it herself and hadn't made much money. Gilliard listened for two weeks and went to work every day. Then, on Thursday he brought home his answer: a two-week paycheck for $15,343.40. Net. "I thought it was one hell of a cash incentive," said the 18-year-old graduate of Martin Luther King High School, who signed up with the phone- soliciting company, Incentive Cash Telemarketing, in Horsham.

Two Philadelphia men described by police as "low-level check cashers" for a criminal group dubbed the Junior Black Mafia were arrested in connection with an attempt to cash a stolen paycheck at a Valley Forge bank. Uwchlan Township Detective Chuck Crawford gave the following account: On Oct. 3, Eric Bell, of the 4500 block of North 13th Street, went to the National Bank of Boyertown's Uwchlan branch and cashed a $542 paycheck that had been stolen from a Pottstown yogurt company.

SEVERAL years ago, I wrote about health care in Japan, where the government had begun charging corporations for their overweight employees. The Japanese tackle diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer and heart disease with a tape measure first: A waist circumference greater than 33.5 inches for women and 35.5 inches for men is enough to trigger a fine for an employer. My readers scoffed at this strategy, reacting with laughter and a lot of eye-rolling. Fast-forward to today. With health-care costs soaring in the United States, many companies have started to penalize overweight employees.

AS SPENCER HAWES said a few days ago, these are the dog days of the NBA season with two more games, including Monday hosting Brooklyn, before the Sixers start the All-Star break. While minds start to wonder and bodies yearn for much-needed rest, coaches try to bleed any sort of energy from their team. Coach Doug Collins is looking to tap into newly signed guard Jeremy Pargo and starting center Lavoy Allen. Pargo, who torched the Sixers earlier this season for 28 points as a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers, played 29 minutes in Saturday's 87-76 win over the visiting Charlotte Bobcats and contributed 12 points and six assists.

HERE'S A QUESTION: Have you seen your first 2013 paycheck (if you're lucky enough to have one)? Notice anything? Like, less money in your take-home pay? And - be honest - did you know that was coming? Or did you think that since you don't make $400,000, you were held harmless when we didn't dive off the "fiscal cliff"? "I think people will be surprised," says veteran economist David Kautter, managing director of American University's Kogod Tax Center. "It's one thing to listen to debates about taxes and spending, but it's not real until it impacts you. " You now may know that what happened to your paycheck is part of the deal between Congress and the White House.

WASHINGTON - If President Obama and Congress ring in the New Year by tumbling over the fiscal cliff, the people who feel the biggest immediate impact will be those already facing some of the most dire circumstances. Emergency unemployment benefits, which help people who have been out of work for more than 26 weeks and who have exhausted their state support, will be cut off without a deal, immediately ending financial aid for more than 2 million people across the country, including roughly 240,000 in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

NEWARK, N.J. - The Newark archbishop is urging more than one million Roman Catholics in North Jersey - especially Catholic politicians - to defend marriage against those he says would "deconstruct or radically alter its meaning. " In a pastoral statement Tuesday, Archbishop John Myers said equating same-sex marriage to marriage as "it has traditionally been understood" damages the institutions of marriage and family. He says redefining marriage would "enshrine in law a nonoptimal way to raise children as equivalent to that which is best.

When it comes to keeping employees happy, a pat on the back may be worth more than a raise in pay. At least that's what the 28,383 men and women who responded to our Top Workplaces 2012 survey say. Feeling appreciated at work and believing that their work has meaning tops the list of conditions that matter to Philadelphia-area workers. And although workers want to be paid what's fair, how much they make matters less than how they feel about their work and the people for whom they work.

With no presents for her children and $3.20 in her checking account, it wasn't the merriest of Christmases for Crystal Wright Edwards. Edwards, a teacher, blames her employer: the Philadelphia School District. The paychecks of hundreds - perhaps thousands - of district employees were late. At 5 p.m. Tuesday, Edwards' check finally arrived. As she put it: "Angry can't even begin to describe how I feel. " District spokesman Fernando Gallard said the checks went out on time, with "no issue on our end. " His villain?

It's been a tough summer for many laid-off employees of the Philadelphia School District. Take Tony Frangiosa. Frangiosa, 28, taught math at Harding Middle School for a year. He was laid off in June, one of more than 2,000 employees throughout the district who lost their jobs because of a budget gap of more than $650 million. "Here's where it gets great," he said in an e-mail. Frangiosa was told to expect his last three paychecks to be deposited in a lump sum in his account on July 22. He spent the weeks leading up to that date in Lexington, Ky., where he has relatives, looking for another teaching job. He also filed for unemployment.

Data about the high-flying pay of U.S. executives are pouring in, and the evidence is stacking up against those who argue that the munificent sums are for magnificent performance at the top. If anything, the findings of two detailed studies over the last 18 months raise questions and intensify a growing sense that the justifications for exorbitant CEO pay are downright nonsensical. Generous executive compensation packages have taken hold since the 1970s in ways unseen in prior generations.

By F. Scott Fitzgerald and James L.W. West III Scribner. 224 pp. $25 Reviewed by Kendal Weaver An often light but still poignant side of F. Scott Fitzgerald is evident in this compilation of 19 of his previously published items and articles, written mostly for popular magazines during 1920-1940. Edited by Fitzgerald scholar James L.W. West III, the collection is billed as an autobiography because the famed American novelist and short-story writer keeps the focus on himself, his views and critiques, his celebrated life and times.