Mayor: Police hiring program a conflict of interest
STAMFORD — Mayor David Martin put question marks around the police department’s troubled extra-duty program when he devised his budget for the coming fiscal year.
It’s not clear how much it should cost to run the program — which schedules offduty officers to direct traffic at work sites or provide security at events — or how much revenue the city earns from a fee charged to utility companies and others who hire the officers, Martin said.
But one thing is clear, he told elected officials while presenting his 2020-21 budget this week.
The program can no longer be run by police officers, as it has been for decades, Martin said.
“Police assigning themselves jobs is an enormous conflict of interest,” the mayor said. “It has to stop.”
The program, run out of the department’s Central Hiring Office, has been under scrutiny since a sergeant and three police officers were arrested last year, charged with submitting false vouchers to pay themselves $188,000 not due them.
The gas and electric utility companies and state Department of Transportation, which most often hire officers for extraduty work, have reported problems with Central Hiring, Martin said.
“I have had complaints from the state and the utilities about what happens there,” Martin said. “The complaints have not been verified, so I’m hoping they are wrong.”
To that end, the administration hired an outside auditor to examine databases and documents and interview officers to gather facts on how Central Hiring Office operates.
Martin said he won’t know details about the extra-duty program until he sees the results of the audit. In the meantime, he has budgeted the program at $13.9 million in expected revenue and the same amount in expenditures for the coming fiscal year, which is what he did this fiscal year.
It means Martin expects that the city will recoup nothing from the 16 percent administrative fee charged to those who hire officers for extra-duty work.
Part of the reason is that, after Martin sees the audit, he will execute a contract
with a Shelton company, Hart Halsey Extra Duty Solutions, to run the extraduty program. The cost of the contract is $945,000 a year, but Martin expects that privatizing the program will save the city 10 to 20 percent per year.
There could be other savings, Martin said.
The sergeant and three police officers who now work in Central Hiring Office will go back on the street, he said.
“That may save us some money in police overtime costs,” Martin said.
Other considerations are
contradicting.
There may be more extra-duty work from the city in the new fiscal year, which starts July 1, because he has budgeted for more street paving, Martin said.
“A lot of the money we spend on road paving circles back to the police department because we pay them to direct traffic around projects,” he said.
But, he said, there may be less extra-duty work from the Board of Education, which pays officers to provide security for events held at the high schools, out of concern for spreading coronavirus, now a pandemic.
There may be another reason to expect less revenue
for the general fund from the extra-duty program, the mayor said.
“There are indications that the economy may be slowing, which means there may be less construction,” he said. “A lot of extra-duty work goes on when streets and sidewalks are closed because of construction. But if the economy is in a struggling state, I don’t know what will happen there.”
He doesn’t intend to raise the administrative fee, Martin said, but he will not take action on the extraduty program until he sees the audit.
Legal Affairs Director Kathryn Emmett said the auditing firm expected to
submit its report in mid-March, but she’s not certain it will be complete by then. Emmett has told the Board of Finance, which oversees the audit, that the firm’s work was “labor-intensive” as it gathered “information that is not readily available.”
The firm is nearly finished, Emmett said Thursday.
“They are working on a final review of a particular aspect of it. I’m not sure how long that will take,” Emmett said. “I think it will be soon.”
Martin said he would rather give Hart Halsey the audit findings than have the firm “come on board and struggle to see what
happened previously.”
The mayor told elected officials it’s unlikely the city will get as much revenue from the extra-duty program as it has in past years — he mentioned a figure of $300,000 — because of the cost of the Hart Halsey contract. Operation of the program, however, must change, Martin said.
“I don’t know that we will save a lot of money in police assignment, but it should not be something that is (run by) the police department,” he said.
Last May four officers, Christopher Broems, Mark Ligi, Paul Pavia and David Sileo, who worked in Central Hiring between 2014 and 2018, were relieved of duty after an investigation into payroll vouchers.
In June they were charged with felony firstdegree larceny for allegedly submitting a total of 643 false vouchers to pay themselves $187,618.
The alleged scheme involved fees paid by those who hire extra-duty officers when a scheduled job is canceled after 10 p.m. the night before the job is to begin. Nearly all the improper vouchers were paid by Eversource Energy.
The officers have pleaded not guilty. Their cases are pending in court.