County clamping down on overtime pay
Last Updated Saturday, Jul 04 2009 12:00 PM
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As the financial storm buffeting Kern County has intensified, most county departments have responded to a call to sharply reduce a major source of extra cost: overtime pay.
And it saved the county an average of $926,552 each bi-weekly pay period in the first six months of 2009.
That's a nearly 50 percent drop from the last half of 2008.
The average number of overtime hours worked in county departments -- with the exception of the Fire Department -- between July and December 2008 was 23,095. That dropped to 12,730 between January and mid-June 2009.
The Kern County Fire Department, which maintains substantial overtime as a part of its staffing plan, did not provide records to the Auditor-Controller's Department in time for that department to release records to The Californian, despite repeated requests.
Officials in high overtime departments, including Kern Medical Center and the Sheriff's Department, said they've fought for a long time to control OT.
The Sheriff's Department averaged 9,148 hours of overtime in each pay period during the last half of 2008. That dropped by almost half between January and mid-June of 2009.
"The employees on both sides of our house are making this happen," said Sheriff Donny Youngblood.
He said some costs are simply uncontrollable.
In the downtown jail and at Lerdo Jail, detention officers work four hours of overtime in each pay period to maintain minimum staffing levels required by law.
However, Youngblood said he has begun to clamp down on the serious problem of staff calling in sick when they are able to work.
That forces the department to pay a fill-in worker overtime in addition to paying the "sick" employee.
"We do not want people coming to work when (they're) sick," Youngblood said. But "we don't want you going to the beach when you're sick. We don't want to find you in a bar when you're sick."
Sheriff's sergeants are also looking for ways to cut overtime day-by-day.
Open shifts may not be filled.
"Do we absolutely have to fill a position when it's Sunday afternoon or Monday morning -- when it's our slow time?" Youngblood said.
Kern Medical Center has also chopped its overtime by nearly half -- from an average of 7,518 hours a pay period in the last half of 2008 to an average of 3,920 hours in the first half of 2009.
CEO Paul Hensler said the hospital has worked hard to reduce overtime expenses.
Nursing department schedules that created four hours of overtime for each nurse in each pay period was eliminated.
And he and other top hospital staff now review each employee's overtime usage and look for ways to cut.
Sometimes OT is unavoidable.
"When a nurse calls in sick, and there's no one to cover her on the shift, the nurse before her works a double," Hensler said.
But much of the cost can be controlled.
"I think we can still do better. We'll continue to squeeze un-needed overtime out of the system," he said.
Other departments have been less successful in reducing overtime.
Overtime in the Environmental Health and Roads departments has changed little, though both only clock an average of fewer than 200 hours of overtime a pay period -- a fraction of what other departments produce.
Environmental Health Director Matt Constantine and Roads Commissioner Craig Pope both said their staff get called out for emergencies and that creates unavoidable overtime.
"A lot of it is emergency response -- our haz mat team," Constantine said. "They're on call 24 hours a day."
Fires, unlicensed food vendors during evening hours, drug raids and material spills often trigger the need.
The Department of Human Services has reduced its average use of overtime a respectable 24 percent between the last half of 2008 and the first half of 2009 -- from 2,919 hours per pay period to 2,216 per pay period.
But the cuts are not as big as those other departments have achieved.
Department Director Pat Cheadle said the layoffs and unemployment have sent waves of new clients into department offices seeking food stamps, CalWORKS and other financial assistance even as her staff has taken a sharp cut.
"Our workload has gone up 30 percent while we have had less staff," Cheadle said.
Much of the overtime is unavoidable, she said, but the department is struggling to control the cost by reviewing the overtime before it is worked.
That review is done by her and her executive staff and workers must log the jobs they complete on overtime.
"Our goal next year is to reduce (overtime) by another 15 percent," Cheadle said.
