COMPTROLLER'S AUDIT FINDS ADMINISTRATIVE
BREAKDOWN IN NASSAU COUNTY JAIL

Overtime Up 100% in Four Years to $20 Million;
Total Compensation for Some Correction Officers Nears $200K

An audit of the Nassau County Correctional Center has uncovered a pattern of uncontrolled costs and an overall failure to supervise personnel time and leave, Comptroller Howard S. Weitzman said today

"This report leads inescapably to the conclusion that there has been a serious administrative failure at the correctional center," Comptroller Weitzman said at a news conference this morning. "Lax supervision has led to soaring personnel costs and widespread abuse of time and leave. Our auditors found that there are very loose controls over the granting and management of overtime, compensatory time and various kinds of leave.

"Although it's impossible to assess exactly how much of the overtime and other kinds of pay could have been avoided, I believe the number is in the millions of dollars," he said.

The audit, covering a period from 2002 through April 2004, found that overtime for corrections officers was granted without proper authorization and without verifying hours worked. The cost of such overtime has almost doubled over the past four years, from $10.3 million in 2000, to $20 million in 2003. The 10 top overtime earners in 2003 had total compensation ranging from $137,000 to $197,000, on base salaries of $71,495.

"Let me be clear," Comptroller Weitzman said. "Employees are entitled to overtime that is legitimately earned, and there may well be times when overtime is necessary and proper. Our audit, however, raises serious doubts about the legitimacy of many of the jail's overtime practices. In short, it is apparent that the jail administrators have failed to manage costs."

The audit's major findings included the following:

The $20 million cost of overtime in 2003 included expenditures for 32 correctional officers who each earned more than $50,000 in overtime. Six of the top 10 overtime earners were in a single unit (transportation), including one whose overtime earnings alone topped $118,000 (see table, p.3);
The position of Commissioner of Corrections has gone unfilled for more than four years, despite a requirement in the county's charter that the Sheriff shall appoint such a commissioner;
The jail's personnel unit is in disarray and has had three different supervisors in one year. The unit does not routinely review and verify overtime claims before entering them into the county payroll system.
County Executive Thomas R. Suozzi, responding to the audit, said, "I want to thank the Comptroller and his staff for their time and effort in conducting this audit. The Sheriff has done an excellent job correcting the problems related to excessive use of force and the dangerous conditions at the jail. The Sheriff, as has been properly noted by the Comptroller, has done a poor job of dealing with issues of time and leave at the Department.

"I have directed my staff to assist the Sheriff in correcting the problems at the jail regarding personnel. As the audit recommends, I am looking to put in place a Commissioner of Corrections to oversee management issues, particularly as they relate to time and leave, and payroll, so that the Sheriff can focus more appropriately on overall safety and conditions at the jail. There still remain many problems like the ones detailed in today's audit. The Comptroller will continue doing his job, and my team will continue to do their jobs, and working together we can continue to improve this $2.4 billion organization that is Nassau County government."

Among the report's other major findings:

• No controls were in place to prevent duplicate entries for overtime claims in the payroll system. As a result, the Payroll Division of the Comptroller's Office reports finding, during the audit period, an average of 10 duplicate entries for overtime pay per pay period.
  
• Top administrators at the Correctional Center self-authorized thousands of hours of 'comp' time before the practice was curtailed in 2003.
  
• The jail overpaid at least $300,000 in shift differential.
  
• Requests for supplemental sick leave at half-pay were not properly authorized by the department or confirmed by doctors.
  
• The personnel unit and higher-level administrators failed to monitor or control unreasonable costs for bereavement leave, "donated" leave, and military leave.
  
• The Correctional Center also overpaid for shift differential (extra pay for night work) for 2002 and 2003. The excess payments totaled approximately $300,000.
  
• Extra sick leave at half-pay (granted when normal sick leave allotments are exhausted) was often given without required medical documentation or authorization from supervisors. For example, two employees, who had been working part-time prior to their illness, were returned to full-time status at the same time they were granted extended sick leave at half-pay, in an apparent effort to increase their payments.

"We are talking about expenditures with an enormous impact on our budget," Comptroller Weitzman said. "It is absolutely critical to Nassau's financial health that Corrections be well managed. The jail's administrators have failed, despite repeated warnings from my office, to implement corrective measures to control costs."

Overtime Spending and Excessive 'Comp' Time

"Overtime has been chronically high at the jail for a decade," Comptroller Weitzman said. "Today's audit finally helps us understand why. Although staff reductions and a burgeoning inmate population are partially to blame, that is far from the whole story. The problem is, in a word, mismanagement.

"The starting pay for a newly hired correction officer is currently $25,000, increasing to $34,666 within a year. For the money it spent on just the overtime for the top 10 overtime earners, Corrections could have hired approximately 15 additional officers, including the cost of their fringe benefits," Comptroller Weitzman noted.

"Correctional Center management, in its response to the audit, asserts that overtime cannot be 'excessive' if it is earned. I disagree," he said. "By definition, a correction officer with a base pay of $71,495, who has earned $118,330 in overtime, has worked an excessive amount of overtime. Similarly, a correction officer who has taken leave on 160 out of 307 scheduled workdays, yet managed to increase his or her 'comp' time balance during the same period, has earned excessive overtime and used excessive absences."

The need for overtime springs in part from staff reductions, he noted. Since 2000, the number of jail employees decreased by 138, even as the number of inmates increased by 245. The Correctional Center, however, bases the number of posts it must fill on a staffing analysis performed by the New York State Commission of Correction that itself may be outdated, as it was based on a previous analysis from 1995. The elimination of posts may also require changes to labor agreements. "A rethinking of minimum staffing requirements is overdue," he said.

"Moreover, it is clear from the audit that the problems at the jail go deeper than just overtime - administrators are allowing certain types of leave to be granted improperly. An egregious example of this occurred between 2000 and 2002, when two of the jail's top administrators improperly granted themselves thousands of hours of compensatory time - equivalent to each one taking over one year off - in violation of county rules prohibiting discretionary overtime for such top administrators, except in extraordinary circumstances. The equivalent value of all that 'comp' time was $194,000. This practice came to an abrupt end in 2003, following news accounts of the granting of excessive 'comp' time to the county's non-union employees."

The full audit report may be downloaded and viewed by clicking on the report title below.

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Nassau County Correctional Center Personnel Unit Examination of Internal Controls For Overtime and Time & Leave Record Keeping (~685kB - 110 pages pdf file)

Corrective Action Plan (~80kB - 14 pages pdf file )