Overtime pay proposed for county sheriff’s deputies

The Garland County Sheriff’s Department has floated a proposal to improve scheduling flexibility by paying public safety personnel overtime wages instead of compensating them with paid time off.

Sheriff Mike McCormick said comp-time accruals have become too unwieldy for the department’s limited resources, making it difficult to meet scheduling requirements that include having no fewer than four deputies on patrol during every 12-hour shift.

Other paid time off, such as vacation and holiday time, the department has to account for makes managing large comp-time balances even more onerous, he said.

“The overtime pay would be the responsibility of the supervisor of each shift to be kept to a minimum,” McCormick said in a letter he wrote the Garland County Quorum Court, and all overtime would require the approval of the sheriff.

“Once this becomes a regular practice, the supervisors will be able to monitor this, and I feel confident that overtime pay will be a null issue,” McCormick said.

The proposal was pulled from Monday night’s human resources committee agenda but is expected to be considered later this spring, the county said. McCormick said it could be “dramatically different” from what was scheduled for consideration Monday night, but future proposals will continue to seek overtime wages in lieu of comp time.

Overtime would be paid after a deputy’s comp time exceeds 40 hours. Per an ordinance adopted last year, the sheriff’s department uses a 14-day, 86-hour pay period to calculate overtime for public safety personnel. Hours worked in excess of that threshold are considered overtime.

The department previously used a 28-day, 171-hour period for calculating overtime despite being on a two-week pay cycle. The Fair Labor Standards Act’s partial overtime exemption for law enforcement personnel allows agencies to use a seven- to 28-day range.

One and a half hours of comp time are awarded for every hour worked in excess of the 86-hour pay period. Some deputies earned comp time in excess of the county’s 480-hour cap that they couldn’t use before the excess accruals were lost at the end of 2016, requiring the county to appropriate $15,052 last year to compensate public safety personnel for the lost benefit.

Large accruals have also been paid to deputies who have quit or were terminated, leading the county to require comp time be used within six months of its accrual.

The proposal called for additional scheduling flexibility by exempting lieutenants from overtime compensation. McCormick’s letter to the quorum court said the officers are routinely required to be on duty in excess of the department’s 43-hour workweek.

“The lieutenants are required to report to work early to coordinate with the oncoming/ off going shifts for pass down and to stay until all employees’ daily pass down reports have been received,” he wrote. “Currently this is costing us a large amount of comp time.”

The letter said the position’s duties fall under U.S. Department of Labor white collar exemptions, which exclude overtime wages for jobs considered executive, administrative or professional in nature. The annual salary also exceeds the exemption’s $23,660 threshold.

Overtime rules promulgated in 2016 raised the trigger to $47,476, qualifying salaried workers making up to that amount for overtime wages, but the rule was ultimately not adopted after a federal court in Texas sided with states and businesses that challenged the regulation.