Prisons Audit Cites Excessive Overtime Pay

In TV and newspaper ads, California prison guards have told the public for years that their jobs are among the toughest in the state. They also happen to be among the best-paying.

Taking advantage of overtime, more than 5,000 correctional officers are making more money than their bosses, according to a state audit made public Wednesday.

In some instances, the use of overtime is so excessive that sergeants and lieutenants are making more than $108,000 a year, the salary paid to Cal Terhune, director of the entire prison system. Last year, flush with overtime pay, one lieutenant made $140,000, double his regular salary.

“This is unbelievable, a clear-cut abuse of overtime,” said Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), who requested the audit. “It is costing the taxpayers of California tens of millions of dollars needlessly. It’s wrong and we need to stop it.”

Excessive overtime in the nation’s largest prison system, where the average officer’s pay is about $50,000 a year, has been a persistent problem. The Department of Corrections was put on notice four years ago that overtime expenses were out of control and needed to be reined in.

On Wednesday, the state auditor made it clear that the department has failed to solve the problem, citing some officers who have come to rely on overtime as part of their paychecks. Overtime expenses for the last fiscal year were $160 million, corrections officials said.

The practice has become so ingrained, the report found, that 1,900 officers were taking home more pay than their superiors far up the chain of command and, as a result, some officers had little or no financial incentive to seek or take promotions, according to the report.

Blaming mismanagement in the prisons, the report concluded that “the department is incurring excessive overtime costs” and that its attempts to discipline staff who claim excessive sick leave “have been ineffective.”

Corrections officials said they have been grappling with the issue since last spring and downplayed the extent of the problem.

“We weren’t surprised by the findings. We would have hoped our efforts would have brought us farther along in impacting this issue,” said Jeanie Esajian, a department spokeswoman. “We’ve looked at some comparable organizations and frankly we’re not that far off.”

The overtime problem grows out of the department’s policies on sick leave.

A portion of the prison work force, the report found, is taking excessive days off for illness. The department is required contractually to offer the most senior officers the opportunity to fill in. Thus the highest-paid officers can make even more money, according to the report.

“The department’s bargaining unit agreement [with the prison guard union] calls for voluntary overtime to be offered on the basis of seniority, an approach that concentrates overtime at the highest pay ranges,” the report said. Officials of the union could not be reached for comment.

The report identified several ways the department could save taxpayers up to $29 million a year by overhauling its policies on sick leave and overtime.

Examining six prisons throughout the state, the audit found a wide variety of policies on sick leave, overtime and holiday pay. Among the prisons with the most use of overtime were Corcoran State Prison and Salinas Valley State Prison. One prison, Pelican Bay along the rugged North Coast, was singled out for keeping the lid on overtime.

At Pelican Bay, Warden Bob Ayers spent more than $900,000 to hire 18 permanent relief officers. When officers call in sick at the prison, these relief officers help cover the absences. They are paid straight time, rather than overtime, which is 50% higher.

In addition, Ayers uses a pool of part-time employees--who are among the lowest-paid guards--to offset additional sick calls.

“We do a lot of monitoring. We want to know exactly where our overtime dollars are going,” said Ayers. “We challenge the watch commanders, asking ‘What are you doing paying overtime on this?’ ”

Ayers said that the need for so much overtime stems from a handful of malingerers abusing sick leave, officers injured in the line of duty and officers who leave their posts to transport prisoners to hospitals and courts.

“I’m not going to tell you that we don’t have our share of folks who abuse overtime and sick leave. There’s a sunny day and they want to go fishing. But we also had 900 incidents last year of officers getting injured in one way or another.”

Polanco, who has advanced proposals to expand private prisons in California and has been a persistent critic of the state system, said he plans to explore whether the Pelican Bay model should be implemented statewide.

Correction officials in Sacramento acknowledged that the overtime system needed tinkering but noted that prisons operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As a result, they sometimes have few options when someone calls in sick.

But the report also highlights other poor management practices. It found that many officers were banking holiday, vacation time and annual leave. The state owes them $79 million in deferred holiday and vacation pay, an amount that is growing by $8 million a year.

“The department has not yet developed a strategy to reduce its large accumulated liability,” the report said. “Allowing these balances to accumulate saves money in the short term; however, deferring the usage . . . increases the ultimate cost to the department.”

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Gladstone reported from Sacramento, Arax from Fresno.