Controller: Deputy claimed days of improper overtime
Chester County deputy reported working 1,602 hours of overtime over a period of three years.
WEST CHESTER >> Harry McKinney has worked for the Chester County Sheriff’s Department off and on for 25 years.
A stocky man with a brushy gray mustache who began his employment in the county in 1985, he attained the rank of lieutenant in 2017 after having returned to the office in 2008.
Over the years, he has become the acknowledged leader of the office’s popular and nationally recognized nine-member K-9 Unit.
But while McKinney carries with him both supervisory powers and an impressive title, he has maintained the rather unremarkable employment classification of Deputy Sheriff-I, or DS-I — the sort of pay grade an incoming deputy with little experience would be given by the county.
It is an anomaly. Unlike his fellow lieutenants in the Sheriff’s Office, who carry the classification of DSIV, McKinney’s DS-I grade specifically does not carry with it management-level authority, or supervisory or direct reporting responsibilities. The duties listed in the county’s job description handbook call for DS-I’s to be assigned “a great variety of tasks,” including prisoner transport, courtroom security and desk duties. McKinney, to all outward appearances, does none of those jobs on a regular basis, and has a staff of deputies reporting directly to him. What benefit the DS-I classification does carry with it, however, is its “non-exempt” status, a federal labor standard that allows an employee to collect overtime payments for hours they work beyond 40 in a week.
And McKinney has done that. According to a report completed by internal auditors with the county Controller’s Office, in the months between January 2016 and December 2018, McKinney reported working 1,602 hours, or 200 workdays, of overtime — 494 hours in 2016, 643 in 2017, and 464 in 2018. For those hours, he was handsomely compensated, being paid $20,014 in overtime in 2016, $27,368 in 2017, and $19,951 in 2018 — in addition to his normal salary of between $57,000 and $59,000 a year.
For the most part, those overtime requests were apparently made by McKinney directly related to his care of the dogs he maintains as part of the K-9 unit, two German Shepherds and a Golden Lab mix. At the same time, the controller’s staff auditors found that no other K-9 handler in the office was given the same amount of regular overtime for care of their canines; indeed, the report cites a policy in place that care for the dogs is considered a part of a deputy’s normal work week of 40 hours.
In all, between 2016 and 2018 the controller’s audit report shows that McKinney was paid $67,335.25 for overtime he claimed for dog care, making him the highest-paid member of the Sheriff’s Department in each of the last three years, and, according to the county’s Department of Human Resources, the eighth-highest overtime worker in the county in 2017.
Those payments would seem to violate the county’s formal policy of putting a cap on overtime payments to an individual employee at 30 percent of their annual salary — his 2017 overtime earnings of $27,368 alone account for 45.9 percent of his salary that year. But according to the audit report, McKinney was able to win approval for those payments because of his longtime personal relationship with the Chester County Sheriff Carolyn “Bunny” Welsh. They have lived together for at least 16 years, sharing a home in Pennsbury Township.
The report contends that, “departmental policies have not applied to Lt. McKinney as a result of their relationship, including his ability to receive excessive (or) any overtime pay.” It alleges that Welsh personally approved the overtime requests, and that that the extra pay inflates the couple’s combined household income, as well as future pension payments for McKinney. Welsh, in her fifth term as county sheriff, is due to leave office at the end of this year; McKinney’s future there is uncertain.
Those are the allegations behind the unprecedented step county Controller Margaret Reif took, filing a court action seeking a surcharge against Welsh personally to recover the $67,335 in overtime payments to McKinney. The filing, made in conjunction with the controller’s solicitor, West Chester attorney Anthony Verwey of the law firm of Gawthrop Greenwood, would place a lien on Welsh for the $67,000 if upheld in court. Welsh has 60 days to appeal the surcharge and fight it out in court.
Welsh, though attorney Dawson R. Muth, who acts as solicitor to the Sheriff’s Office, pushed back.
In an email, Muth called Reif’s action “slanderous,” filled with “false accusations,” and “a politically motivated defamatory attack on a dedicated public servant.