A recent “audit” conducted of overtime policies in the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office revealed that the top overtime earner in the department made $170,000 in overtime last year on top of the $103,000 that was his base salary. No explanation for how that could happen was included in the audit prepared by the county Auditor Controller’s office in response to escalating overtime hours clocked by sheriff’s deputies and corrections officers.
In 2018, the department’s total overtime was $11.1 million; last year, it was $21 million. Every year, the supervisors are asked to shell out additional dollars to cover these growing costs. The audit suggests that employees are taking advantage of the contract their unions negotiated to maximize the number of hours qualifying for overtime, by substituting paid sick or vacation leave hours for regular work hours and then making up the rest of their work week with hours that can be billed at time-and-a-half overtime rates. This practice, while hardly unique to Santa Barbara, accounts for $5.9 million of the departmental overtime cost this year.
The audit found that nearly 25 percent of all workdays worked triggered overtime billing. Twenty-four managers — exempt from overtime — reportedly racked up $715,000 in “Extra Help” job assignments. Twenty-nine sheriff’s employees took home more than $1,000 per pay period in overtime, and 84 out of 184 new hires onboarded in the past two years worked more than 500 hours in overtime during those two years.
Sheriff Bill Brown responded with a sharply worded letter stating he was “extremely disappointed” by the audit, saying it fails to take into consideration how at times public safety officers need to be available 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. Insufficient staffing, he cautioned, puts employees, inmates, and the public at greater risk of injury death and legal liability. He also said the audit was not really an audit, nor did the auditors check their initial findings with his department or with Human Resources.
With jail construction and operations eating up increasingly greater percentages of the county’s general fund — looking at a 10-year shortfall of $66 million — county administrators and supervisors have grown increasingly impatient with last-minute surprises. The matter is scheduled to go before the Board of Supervisors on February 10.
