Sheriff’s overtime practices criticized [updated]

Los Angeles County auditors have found that hundreds of Sheriff’s Department employees are racking up such significant amounts of overtime that they may be undermining their job performance.

In a just-released report, the Auditor-Controller’s office said that 348 sheriff’s employees had worked the equivalent of an extra six months a year in overtime—substantially boosting their income while raising questions about internal controls and public safety.

“Employees who work significant amounts of overtime may not be physically/mentally capable of performing their jobs,” wrote Auditor-Controller Wendy L. Watanabe. “In addition, we noted that non-emergency overtime is not always pre-approved, and management does not always monitor individual overtime worked/reported for compliance with work schedule limitations.”

Among other things, auditors examined the top 20 overtime earners in the department, finding that the vast majority of them had violated rules prohibiting excessive double shifts or stringing together more than 12 consecutive days of work.

“Sheriff’s timekeeping staff are supposed to issue notices for work rule violations such as the ones we noted,” according to the audit report. “However, timekeepers did not identify 32 of the 44 violations noted in our testwork.”

Independently, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky’s office in recent months also examined the department’s top overtime earners because of the large sums being spent and concerns that deputies could be risking their effectiveness by working too many hours.

Yaroslavsky’s staff found that, in 2008, at least 10 deputies more than doubled their salaries with overtime. One deputy with a base pay of $105,561, for example, collected an additional $130,214 in overtime, bringing his annual pay to $235,775.

He was one of at least 15 deputies and sergeants who earned more than $200,000 because of overtime, according to county records.

The auditor’s overtime examination focused on the period between March 2007 and February 2008. It was undertaken as part of a broader effort by the Auditor-Controller to study payroll and personnel issues throughout the Los Angeles County bureaucracy.

As a result of its findings, the Auditor-Controller’s office called on the Sheriff’s Department to implement new overtime policies and tighter controls. Auditors began their latest report by noting that the Sheriff’s Department had exceeded its overtime budget by an average of 104% during the past five fiscal years—or an average of nearly $83 million annually.

Sheriff’s officials, responding to the findings, noted that overtime for fiscal year 2008-2009 was dramatically reduced as department vacancies were filled, meaning fewer overtime hours were needed to backfill by existing personnel.

In its response, which is attached to the audit, the department also said some of the officers cited for working multiple double shifts and excessive consecutive days were assigned to Special Enforcement Bureau, Narcotics and Homicide, where they “are sometimes required to respond to unplanned and/or critical events…While the units make every attempt to schedule their personnel in order to avoid such violations, in the interest of public safety, it is sometimes unavoidable.”

Besides the sheriff’s use of overtime, the Auditor-Controller also examined other financial issues within the department, including industrial accident payments, leave accounting, monitoring of bonus eligibility, processing employee terminations and data security. In these areas, too, auditors found problems.

For example, the auditors reviewed the cases of 25 employees who were on extended sick leave and found that eight, or 32%, were potentially “overpaid” $7,000 apiece because of a lack of rigorous oversight of documents that were being filed. Auditors found similar overpayments in a review of industrial accident cases.


[Updated 12/22]

The Board of Supervisors today unanimously approved a motion by Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Gloria Molina that would bring more oversight and accountability to overtime usage in the Sheriff’s Department.

Among other things, the motion directs the Chief Executive Officer to report back to the board on January 19 with strategies for identifying and implementing new overtime policies and controls.

In one of the most significant reforms, the motion directs the CEO, with help from the Auditor-Controller, to monitor Sheriff’s employees whose overtime earnings exceed 50 percent of their regular salaries. The goal for such reviews is to identify the kind of work schedule violations that were uncovered by auditors and that raise questions about whether job performance is being risked by excessive overtime.