Hyperion Pay Scandal Alleged : Personnel: Police say sewage plant employees billed overtime they didn’t work and remodeled a private boat on city time.

Los Angeles police are investigating allegations that about a dozen employees at the city’s Hyperion sewage treatment plant built a fishing platform for a private boat while on the job and received overtime pay for hours they never worked.

“We are looking at potential grand theft” charges, said Detective Jerry Swick of the bunco-forgery bureau. He declined to say how many of the workers might face charges or how much money was involved. He said the investigation will “take a few months.”

Los Angeles officials speculated that false overtime claims and work on the fishing platform went undetected because of frantic work conditions at the plant in early 1989, when several construction deadlines came due on the ongoing $1.4-billion expansion of the facility near El Segundo. The city was tipped off to the alleged wrongdoing by an anonymous caller to a city hot line, the officials said.

“For a good period of time they were working 12 hours a day, seven days a week,” said Assistant City Atty. Tim Hogan, who advises the personnel section of the city Department of Public Works. “They were getting two to three times their normal hours in overtime.”

Los Angeles officials said they have taken disciplinary action against two of the employees, both of whom were waste-water treatment mechanics with supervisorial responsibilities. City officials said they have turned the matter over to police and it is unlikely any other employees would be disciplined administratively.

“At this point, we are targeting mostly the supervisors because, let’s face it, if the employees didn’t know what they were really working on, and the supervisors condoned it, they were the ones really responsible,” said Marjean Schwartz, director of personnel for the Department of Public Works.

One of the supervisors, identified as the ringleader, allegedly arranged construction of the fishing platform and ordered at least $2,000 in materials--mostly aluminum--for the project. The employee, whom officials would not name, resigned in January after a warning that he was about to be fired, Schwartz said.

The second employee was fired in March for allegedly logging bogus overtime hours for his subordinates, having knowledge of the fishing platform and providing pornographic films for his workers at the plant, Schwartz said.

The employee was identified in Civil Service Commission records as David C. Fowers Jr. of Upland. Fowers has appealed his firing to the commission, which is expected to consider the case next month. A commission examiner concluded a hearing on the matter last week.

In a telephone interview Friday, Fowers said he knew about the fishing boat platform but did not report it because such practices were “prevalent throughout the plant” and he had only recently been named a supervisor.

“I am a new supervisor, and I emulate what I see,” said Fowers, 45. “Throughout the plant, people are doing personal projects fully with the knowledge of their supervisors. Who am I to go up to my managers and say something?”

Fowers denied that he logged false overtime for his employees, saying the overtime in question was for employees on standby duty. He said he did provide pornographic films to keep his workers from “dispersing throughout the plant” during slow periods.

“I exercised bad judgment, I recognize that,” Fowers said. “I should be punished, but certainly not terminated.”

Schwartz said the city has been unable to document how many hours of false overtime were billed because of the large amount of legitimate overtime work at the plant. She would say only that it ran into “the thousands of dollars.”

City officials said the fishing boat platform, which was about 10 by 12 feet in size, was worked on for a friend of the supervisor who resigned.