Soaring OT fattens public safety paychecks, but at a cost
Lodi OT spending is up $1.9M over 2012, or 168 percent
California cities and counties have too few cops and too many wildfires to get a handle on their soaring overtime budgets.
That’s how they explain the $3.7 billion they spent collectively on overtime last year, a 60 percent increase from the $2.3 billion they shelled out for overtime in 2012.
The dynamic means police and firefighters have no shortage of opportunities to pad their paychecks with overtime hours, but for some, the extra work is taking a toll on their bodies and families.
“The overtime our officers are working is becoming a problem for them. We’re at the point where we’re asking too much, I fear,” said Lodi City Manager Steve Schwabauer. Overtime spending in his city is up $1.9 million, or 168 percent, over 2012.
Their long hours also mean they could be pulling mandatory overtime shifts when they roll up to a car accident or respond to a 911 call.
“If something happens on your shift and you’re on hour 20 you’re obviously you’re not going to be like you were on hour two,” said Adam Lockie, 42, a longtime Lodi police detective.
The large majority of California’s 482 cities saw overtime increase faster than inflation. Seventy-nine cities saw overtime costs more than double from 2012 to 2017, including:
Sacramento, where overtime costs rose by $16.2 million, or 117 percent. Eight fire department employees earned more than $100,000 in overtime pay in 2017, including a fire captain who earned $98,761 in regular pay -- and $172,744 in overtime.
Los Angeles, where overtime costs rose by $342 million, or 111 percent. Nearly 700 LA municipal employees earned more than $100,000 in overtime pay in 2017, including a fire captain who earned $92,378 in regular pay — and $306,405 in overtime.
Merced, where overtime costs rose by $1.7 million, or 105 percent.
Patterson, where overtime costs rose by $600,000, or 173 percent.
Sacramento Assistant City Manager Leyne Milstein said a hot economy partly explains the rising overtime. Despite aggressive hiring efforts, the city has 72 vacancies for police officers and 35 for firefighters.
It’s recording high overtime both in its short-handed public safety departments and in its stretched building department.
“You can really see it in the vacancies we have in every department. In a job market with such low unemployment, it becomes very difficult for us to hire,” she said.
All but a handful of California’s 58 county governments saw overtime increase faster than inflation. Some of the largest increases since 2012 came in:
Sacramento County, where overtime costs rose by $14.7 million, or 73 percent.
San Luis Obispo County, where overtime costs rose by $3.1 million, or 92 percent.
Yolo County, where overtime costs rose by $1.2 million, or 68 percent.
Madera County, where overtime costs rose by $900,000, or 84 percent.
The counties, too, are seeing their public safety costs spike because they’re having trouble recruiting law enforcement officers.
“We would happily hire qualified candidates if we could get them,” said San Luis Obispo County Administrative Office Assistant Guy Savage. Almost a fifth of the county’s patrol and correctional deputy positions were vacant last year, he said.
High overtime costs grab attention because they lead to individual police officers and firefighters receiving eye-popping wages. It’s common for local governments to have at least a few rank-and-file public safety officers earning more take-home-pay than city managers and city attorneys.
But local government leaders say the overtime actually saves taxpayers money.
Hiring an employee with full benefits usually costs more than paying overtime, especially since the California Public Employees’ Retirement System began raising the fees it charges to local governments to pay for their workers’ pensions.
They’ve been escalating quickly since CalPERS in 2016 acknowledged that it expects to earn less money from its investment portfolio over time, a decision that caused it to require cities to kick in more money to ensure their employees will get the pensions they’ve been promised.
In Lodi, for instance, the city sends almost 50 cents to CalPERS for every dollar it pays in regular wages to police officers.
“I read a great deal of anger about safety overtime. I think it is really important that people understand that it’s actually cheaper than the fully burdened cost of adding the fullybenefited junior firefighter,” said Schwabauer, who is among the most outspoken city managers in the state in pressing CalPERS to give local governments more options to adjust their spending on pensions.
Paso Robles City Manager Tom Frutchey, too, cited the “change in the new position/overtime calculus resulting from the large increases in CalPERS rates” in explaining the 95 percent increase in overtime spending in his city. He means the city has an incentive to let a position go vacant for some time before filling it.