As overtime costs to guard the state prisons continue to climb, corrections officials say they can’t accurately track how the money is spent or what is driving the increase.
“I can’t even get an accurate idea of where my overtime is, what it’s being associated with, or where in the prison system it’s occurring,” Department of Corrections Commissioner William Wrenn said recently before a panel of lawmakers, gubernatorial staff and state officials. “We end up spinning our wheels trying to track every single dollar.”
The Department of Corrections is seeking $500,000 in the state’s next capital budget to upgrade its scheduling software, among other things, which will better track overtime spending, Wrenn said.
Currently, prison staffing schedules are written out by hand and corrections officers submit paper time cards. The payroll information is then put into a statewide system. But it’s difficult to look back at why overtime was used on a specific occasion, Wrenn said, because the system doesn’t identify that detail. Anything from sick leave to job vacancies can prompt the use of overtime hours. Identifying the reason now involves consulting the paper records.
“We have wasted how many staffing hours to figure this out,” Wrenn said. “When we do finally figure out where the overtime is coming from, sometimes our numbers and reasons may not be that accurate.”
The department spent about $9 million in overtime this fiscal year, Wrenn said, far beyond the roughly $3.7 million allocated to the department in the budget.
Corrections had requested about $7 million for overtime expenses during the budget process.
Department overtime costs have been rapidly on the rise. Over a recent five-year timeframe, the corrections overtime costs more than doubled, from $3.3 million in 2009 to more than $8.1 million in 2014.
Officials have attributed the overtime increase to a high number of job vacancies – there are roughly 100 in any given month, according to spokesman Jeff Lyons.
Corrections officers and guards are among the highest paid state employees, when overtime pay is included. Several corrections workers earned more money in overtime pay than they made in salary during 2014, according to state records.
The governor will present a capital budget proposal at the start of 2017. It will then go to the Senate and House for revisions.
The Department of Corrections also requested $400,000 to repair a water main, $250,000 to fix an elevator and $700,000 to replace bathrooms, all at the men’s prison in Concord.
(Allie Morris can be reached at 369-3307 or amorris@cmonitor.com.)