ALBANY – An 18-month audit of the Village of Port Chester found $2.2 million in overtime pay was expended on the police department and the local government could have hired five additional officers without spending another dime.
The overtime was attributed to staff shortages. The village normally has 62 officers, but as of February, eight were out of work due to long-term injuries, two were on light duty and one was retired bringing the staffing level to 51. As a result, each officer worked the equivalent of 15 extra weeks and sick time increased by 274 percent. Management believes the sick time increase was directly attributable to the significant amount of overtime each officer was required to work.
Auditors said the village should evaluate whether to continue incurring police overtime to cover staff shortages instead of hiring new officers.
The audit also found there are no written policies or procedures governing how leave time accrual records are maintained or who is responsible for monitoring the balances, and as a result, 54 percent of the employees reviewed carried over vacation leave from year to year, even though it was not permitted to their collective bargaining agreements.
The state officials said the village should make sure that all current
collective bargaining agreements have all current leave time provisions
included, and develop a plan to correct the leave time accrual records
and reduce the leave time totals so they will be in accordance with those
agreements.
