Yep, lots of OT

Prison officers rack up overtime
Department of Corrections attributes cost to rise in inmates, staff shortages
By PATRICK MARLEY
pmarley@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Dec. 12, 2007
Madison - An unexpected influx of state prisoners in recent years has caused overtime costs at the Department of Corrections to soar, boosting the pay of some officers to six figures.
Prison Officers Overtime
By The Numbers
$29,591
Starting pay for correctional officers
$120,908
Pay earned by a sergeant at the Fox Lake Correctional Institution

Overtime exploded between mid-2005 and mid-2006, jumping 27%, to $36.3 million, state records show. Overtime for the fiscal year that ended this summer rose to $38.2million, the bulk of which was paid by state taxpayers.

The spike in overtime has come at a time when the Department of Corrections projected that the prison population would drop slightly. Instead, between mid-2005 and mid-2007, it increased by about 1,000 inmates.

Lawmakers took steps to control overtime in the state budget passed in October by approving hiring 50 officers. The move is expected to cut overtime costs to $26.3 million this fiscal year.

Overall payroll costs will increase, but they would have been $1.2 million higher this fiscal year if the state had continued to pay overtime at the same rate instead of hiring new officers, even when accounting for the cost of benefits, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

The staff shortage allowed 308 officers to earn more than $20,000 each in overtime alone last year, a Journal Sentinel analysis of state data found. Twenty-six of them more than doubled their wages. Fourteen earned six-figure salaries, including two who made more than $120,000.

Half of those 14 officers were within three years of retiring. Officers who put in long hours at the end of their careers can increase their state pensions by tens of thousands of dollars a year.

More inmates
Susan Crawford, until recently a top aide to Corrections Secretary Rick Raemisch, said the boost in overtime was caused by many factors. Chief among them was the increase in inmates and labor agreements that increased wages and gave officers more days off, she said.

When he first ran for governor five years ago, Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle said he wanted to reduce the state workforce by 10,000 employees by 2010. Lawmakers have also been wary of adding new employees to the state payroll.

The state budget Doyle proposed in February would have allowed the high overtime payments to continue. Lawmakers then said they wanted to hire 50 more officers, and Doyle agreed to the plan.

Crawford said Doyle did not originally ask for more officers because he was already seeking 265 more jobs to provide satellite monitoring of sex offenders and to provide health care to inmates. She noted legislators eliminated 39 corrections jobs in 2005; the agency was able to focus most of those cuts in non-security areas.

"We have not always had a lot of success in getting additional hiring authority," said Crawford, who left her corrections job last week for a top position at the Department of Natural Resources.

Rep. Scott Suder (R-Abbotsford), who works on corrections issues on the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee, said he's skeptical of the department's explanations.

"The answers they gave us didn't seem to quite add up," he said. "We feel there's something else going on, but we haven't been able to pinpoint it. It seems there's something not quite right. Perhaps they need an audit."

The Department of Corrections has taken steps to curb overtime, including reviewing overtime use in advance, delaying training that would occur on overtime and consolidating prisoner transports, said agency spokesman John Dipko.

Overtime defended
Marty Beil, executive director of the Wisconsin State Employees Union, said critical lawmakers should spend some time on the corrections job. He said officers sometimes are forced to work a second eight-hour shift after they're done with their regular one because of staff shortages - all in an environment in which inmates hassle officers.

"If they think this is a circus or playground that people are going to work in (and) that this is a place with nice working conditions, come out and take a look," he said.

He said overtime was driven by a shortage of workers. The 50 new officers will help somewhat, he said, but the Legislature should have approved hiring twice as many officers.

Officers who frequently volunteer for overtime might earn six-figure salaries, but they're able to do so only by working long hours that disrupt their families' lives, Beil said. He said the union does not encourage putting in such hefty overtime.

"Is it healthy? I don't think so," Beil said. "Is it wrong? No."

Senior officers get the first crack at overtime shifts under their labor contract with the state. If no one volunteers, a junior officer is forced to take the shift.

The size of the prison population ramped up dramatically in the 1990s but leveled off in the early 2000s. The number of prisoners dipped in 2005, and Crawford said agency officials thought a trend was developing.

They expected to have about 21,500 inmates by mid-2007, but instead found themselves handling more than 22,700 inmates. The increase required more officers at prisons at any given time, leading to more shifts that had to be covered with overtime, Crawford said.

The agency projects the population to drop to about 22,400 by mid-2009, in part because of a program that allows inmates to shave time off their prison sentences by undergoing drug treatment.

Names not released
Ninety-five percent of the officers took overtime at some point last year.

Officers make $29,591 when they start on the job. With benefits, their total compensation package is $45,339.

A sergeant at the Fox Lake Correctional Institution earned $120,908 last year, the most of the 5,258 officers, sergeants and counselors in the department's database. The sergeant had a base salary of $52,213 and made $68,695 in overtime.

The sergeant was paid for 82 hours of work a week on average.

An officer at the Columbia Correctional Institution also made more than $120,000, and a sergeant at that institution made over $119,000. In all, 32 officers pulled in more than $90,000 last year.

Officers who put in long hours at the end of their careers are able to boost their pensions, which are based on their three highest years of pay.

An officer with 30 years of experience earning $60,000 annually for his last three years would get a pension of $38,178 a year. But if the same officer put in enough overtime to bring his salary to $100,000 a year for his last three years, he would get a pension of $63,630 a year.

Officers earn time and a half when they work on holidays or when they put in more than 40 hours in a week.

The overtime database the department released does not include officers' names because of a labor contract provision that says the agency cannot release workers' names, addresses and home phone numbers.

The Journal Sentinel sued the state in 2005 over the secrecy clause as it sought the names of state workers who had their state driving privileges revoked, arguing that the contract could not trump the state's open records law. The paper won in Dane County Circuit Court in May, but the union, which intervened in the case, appealed.

The state is not releasing union employees' names pending the outcome of that appeal.