The management audit of Sheriff’s Office overtime was requested by the Metropolitan King County Council and was included in the 1999 Auditor’s Office work program. The audit was prompted by council concerns regarding increasing overtime use in the Sheriff’s Office, and the Sheriff’s requests for an audit of budget policies and a supplemental budget appropriation to pay excess overtime expenses incurred in 1998.

The audit objectives were to determine why budget overspending occurred during 1998 and to evaluate policies and procedures that may have contributed to the overexpenditure. The audit focused on analyzing patrol officer overtime and compensatory time (comp time) data, but did not include any review or analysis of the actual tasks performed.

The general conclusions of this audit are that overtime in the Sheriff’s Office increased significantly despite notable decreases in workload indicators, and management had not analyzed overtime and comp time usage to determine what specifically caused the increases. Additionally, the lack of an adequate system for recording and analyzing overtime use prevented the Sheriff’s Office from reducing its overtime expenditures because management did not have full knowledge of where, when, and why overtime was incurred. This deficiency was exacerbated by the lack of data and comprehensive policies, procedures, and guidelines for managing overtime. Our recommendations focus on the need to collect appropriate data that can be analyzed to determine the causes of overtime, monitor overtime to identify areas where it can be reduced or eliminated, implement procedures to assist in scheduling officers, and develop policies and procedures governing the authorization and use of overtime.

Finding 2-2.  Sheriff’s Office management provided several reasons for the significant growth in overtime and comp time, but had not analyzed available data to determine that none of the reasons given were substantiated.

Sheriff’s Office staff offered several reasons for the significant growth in overtime and comp time use, including:

the inability to manage court overtime,
increased use of vacation time due to higher accrual rates,
increased use of sick leave due to passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act, and
immediately staffing new contract cities at higher levels than when they were unincorporated areas.

After analysis, audit staff concluded that none of these reasons was substantiated. We concluded that the primary reason that Sheriff’s Office staff have been unable to determine the specific reasons why overtime and comp time use have significantly increased is that the Sheriff’s Office did not collect and analyze the appropriate data to enable them to do so.

The audit recommended that the Sheriff’s Office develop procedures to monitor and manage overtime and comp time, including methods for collecting and analyzing detailed data related to workload and hours worked.

Consistent overtime budget deficits indicate that overtime is approved without regard to budget limitations, thus indicating inadequate accountability for managing overtime expenditures. The lack of comprehensive policies, procedures, or guidelines means that overtime and comp time approval is at the discretion of each manager without regard to specific criteria that would provide effective management of overtime and comp time on a department-wide basis. Although the Sheriff’s Office analyzed overtime data that they collected, the focus was on expenditures rather than the underlying causes of those expenditures.

The audit also found that a limited number of patrol officers earned a relatively high percentage of the overtime. Specifically, 9% of the patrol officers worked 35% of the overtime hours, 20% earned 57% of the overtime expenditures, and one officer more than doubled his earnings through overtime, while 30% of the officers earned less than one hour of overtime per week. This indicates that some officers may be exploiting the availability of overtime or may view it as an entitlement. More importantly, patrol officer efficiency and safety may be reduced due to the physical and/or mental exhaustion that is likely to occur from working excessive overtime on an ongoing basis.

The audit recommended that the Sheriff’s Office establish comprehensive department-wide policies and procedures that include criteria for approving overtime and comp time, limit the overtime and/or comp time hours that an individual employee can earn in a year and/or provide for assigning overtime on a more equitable basis, and require periodic verification of work performed on overtime and comp time to prevent potential abuse.

Finding 2-4.   Growth in overtime to backfill for absences and vacancies increased backfill overtime expenditures and hours by 41% and 31%, respectively, from 1996 through 1998.

Operational overtime expenditures increased over $2.4 million, or 142%, from 1994 to 1998; and operational overtime increased by over 40,000 hours, or 57% from 1995 through 1998. A primary reason for this growth was the increased use of backfill overtime (i.e., overtime worked when one employee fills in for another who is absent or for a vacant position), which had a 41% increase in expenditures and a 31% increase in hours worked from 1996 through 1998 despite a corresponding decrease of 29% in the average number of absence hours per employee, and a 133% decrease in the average monthly vacancy rate during that same period of time.

Audit staff found, however, that management of overtime can be improved by using the Managing Patrol Performance (MPP) computer model to assist in developing officer work schedules. Precinct 4 successfully used MPP in 1999, and achieved a 54% reduction in its overtime hours from 1998 to 1999 as a result.

The audit recommended that the Sheriff expand the overtime reports to provide details regarding why backfill overtime is used, establish criteria for when backfill overtime may or may not be used, regularly analyze backfill overtime data and use the analysis as a basis for refining the criteria for when backfill overtime may or may not be used, and require all precincts to use MPP as a management tool for scheduling patrol officers.

Finding 2-5.   The Sheriff’s Office computed a relief factor for police officer positions but did not use the factor as a scheduling tool.

Although Sheriff’s Office staff have calculated a staffing relief factor (i.e., a number that determines how many full-time equivalents (FTEs) are required to fill a single shift, 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, considering the average number of position vacancies and time an employee is absent due to vacation, sick leave, training, etc.) since the mid-1980s, they do not use the factor to assist them in scheduling officers to specific shifts. The audit describes how to use the relief factor in combination with the scheduling factor (i.e., the number of FTEs required to fill a single shift, 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, assuming no absences or vacancies) to determine the number of officers that should be assigned on a regular basis and how many should be floaters, based on the budgeted number of FTEs.

The audit recommended that the Sheriff’s Office use the relief factor as a basis for scheduling patrol officers, and establish a relief pool to be used as the primary means of backfilling for absences and vacancies.

Finding 2-6.   Procedural changes reduced court overtime costs by 25%, from 1994 to 1998. However, the lack of a systematic method to notify officers of changes in court dates results in officers receiving overtime payments for unnecessary court appearances.

Implementation of a "key system" to schedule officers for district court appearances resulted in a 25% decrease in court overtime expenditures, from $553,118 in 1994 to $413,947 in 1998. However, court overtime expenditures could potentially be further reduced by reducing the number of times an officer appears in court unnecessarily due to a defendant’s failure to appear or a defense attorney requesting a continuance on the day of a scheduled trial, by placing an officer on standby the morning of the scheduled court date, or by implementing a notification system to inform officers of last minute changes in court dates.

The audit recommended that the Sheriff’s Office work with the District Court to consistently provide the work, vacation, and training schedules of each officer and to expand the use of standby to all of the court divisions; work with the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office to develop and implement an effective system for notifying officers of changes in court dates; and implement a system to track the number of court appearances when an officer did not testify, and the reason therefor, to determine where improvements can be made in managing court overtime.

Finding 2-7.   Growth in the use of comp time increases costs to the Sheriff’s Office through reduced police services, higher costs, and/or additional use of backfill overtime when the comp time is taken later. Also, the Sheriff’s Office faces the potential of unanticipated payouts for employees who cash out their unused comp time.

When an officer earns one hour of comp time, police services are immediately increased by that hour of work and later decreased by one and a half hours, for a net loss in police services of one-half hour. Allowing officers to earn comp time in lieu of overtime is likely to be one reason that the use of both overtime and comp time increased because the Sheriff’s Office backfills many of the hours taken off as comp time through the use of additional overtime or comp time earned. The cost of comp time is also increased when officers earn more money when they take the time off than when they earned the comp time, either as a result of cost of living allowance adjustments or step increases.

The audit recommended that the Sheriff’s Office implement policy and budget decisions that address the increasing accumulation of comp time.

Finding 2-8.   There was no correlation between prior years’ historical overtime expenditures and requested budget amounts or between adopted budget amounts and actual expenditures.

Audit staff found that historical overtime expenditures were not used as a basis for estimating future overtime budgets, and adopted overtime budgets were not used as a constraint for overtime expenditures. Overtime budget requests were an average of 23% less than they should have been from the 1994 through 1999 budget processes based on the prior years’ expenditures. Although a 1995 budget proviso required the Sheriff’s Office to implement a system to improve its tracking and management of overtime hours and costs and to use the data collected as a basis for developing its overtime budget, audit staff found no evidence that this had been done.

The audit recommended that the Sheriff’s Office use the combination of historical overtime expenditures and analysis of overtime used to estimate the budget for future overtime needs.