Prison OT =No Family Time

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Norco prison workers racking up the OT -- themorningcall.com
themorningcall.com

Norco prison workers racking up the OT
Officials say sickness and injuries are to blame, and they promise reform is coming

November 10, 2009

Northampton County Prison workers are racking up more than $1.5 million in overtime per year, garnering more extra hours than employees in every other department in the county combined, according to a county audit report.

The report, released Monday by Controller Stephen J. Barron Jr., paints a picture of runaway overtime costs that amount to 15 percent of all wages paid to prison workers, compared with just 2.3 percent for all other county departments.

above what County Executive John Stoffa makes.

''I understand the need for overtime in a 24-hour facility like the prison,'' Barron said. ''But there are better ways to do this. There's no excuse for expenses like this when money is as tight as it is right now.''

He stopped short of saying prison workers were defrauding the county, but said inefficiencies, combined with a system that allows prison guards to essentially schedule their own overtime, had led to hundreds of thousands of dollars of waste.

Prison officials defended the costs Monday at a County Council budget meeting, blaming unpredictable waves of sick time and injuries. Deputy Warden Todd Buskirk, formerly the facility's director, said recent changes would stem the flow of overtime.

''At the end of this fiscal year, you're going to see a dramatic decrease,'' said Buskirk, noting the implementation of a time-card clock system for employees, set to go online Sunday.

Still, some council members said the ''excuses'' were the same as prior years. Councilman Ron Angle said the prison operates as ''an island unto its own'' that needs to be held more accountable for its expenses.

Stoffa, agreeing in theory with Angle, told council that a committee would be formed to study the problem in every county department.

''I think it involves a lot of sick time, maybe double shifting, maybe poor recordkeeping,'' Stoffa told the council.

The audit looked at overtime during a five-year period from 2004 to 2008. In that time, overtime costs countywide increased from $2 million in 2004 to $3.6 million last year, the report states. Much of that came in the prison, where despite having just 270 of the county's 1,892 full-time workers, more than 51 percent of all county overtime costs were logged, according to the report.

In some cases, overtime was incorrectly applied, resulting in overpayments to some workers. But many of the costs can be attributed to inefficient scheduling, Barron said.

For example, if the county hired another worker to work the 2,000 overtime hours logged by the guard who made nearly $117,000 last year, it would have saved $26,000, he said.

In addition, guards are allowed to schedule a colleague to cover their sick, vacation or personal time shifts. That virtually always results in overtime, in some cases unnecessarily, he said.

Perhaps most troubling, Barron said, is that it's impossible to verify all of the overtime because most of the payroll records have been destroyed, despite a county policy requiring their preservation for three years, Barron said.