Road to Riches: City Workers Claimed 5,525 Overtime Hours for Illegal Stream Dumping
Editor’s Note: This is the second story in a three-part series about the use of overtime at the Honolulu Road Maintenance Division. Read the rest of our coverage:
- Road to Riches Part 1: Overtime at City Road Division
- Road to Riches Part 2: City Workers Claimed 5,525 Overtime Hours for Illegal Stream Dumping
The City and County of Honolulu already owes $1.7 million in fines for illegally dumping concrete rubble into a Waianae stream. It owes another $1.13 million to remove the debris. But the true cost of the incident is much higher: City workers were paid more than 5,500 hours of overtime to do the work in the first place.
A Civil Beat review of overtime records shows that over a span of 15 months, 50 city workers earned at least 5,525 hours of overtime to pile concrete rubble into Mailiili Stream. In several areas, the debris covered the stream’s entire 99-foot width.
About a dozen workers did most of the work. One superintendent logged 362 hours of overtime alone. Workers’ hourly overtime pay ranged from $26 to $80 for the work, which was mostly done on weekends.
While the dumping happened more than a year ago — between February 2008 and May 2009 — it’s part of a pattern of excessive overtime claims by the city’s Road Maintenance Division. Former streetsweeping employees of the division, which is under the Honolulu Department of Facility Maintenance, face criminal charges for allegedly faking overtime claims.
A review of the department’s overtime records also uncovered possible double-charging with workers claiming overtime twice in the same day for different jobs performed at overlapping times. (The city says it didn’t pay employees twice.)
For the Mailiili misstep, the total cost of the overtime is unclear. In testimony before the City Council, the Department of Facility Maintenance has previously estimated it spent $53,000 on overtime pay for the dumping. That figure is too low for the number of hours Civil Beat calculated. That would mean workers were paid only $9.59 an hour for the 5,525 hours.
While some of the records reviewed by Civil Beat specified an hourly pay rate, some only logged the hours worked. And because the city is not required to disclose the exact salaries of unionized employees, total costs could not be calculated. It is unclear how much of the work was done during the normal work week or why the work was done on overtime.
City officials turned down repeated requests for in-person interviews to discuss the overtime.
823 Overtime Shifts
Half of the Mailiili overtime work — 2,815 hours — was spent performing the actual dumping, according to reports reviewed by Civil Beat. The work is described as “loading and hauling concrete slabs to Mailiili Stream” and “leveling and compacting concrete slabs onto Mailiili stream floor.”
A total of 257 truck loads of rubble — a mix of broken concrete slabs, used utility metal cabinets, broken sign posts, asphalt concrete and dirt — were dumped into the stream.
Here’s an overtime sheet authorizing employees to “load and haul concrete slabs from Halawa to Mailiili” and “push, level and compact concrete slabs” onto the stream’s floor:
Workers filled in an area of about 1.08 acres — about the size of Aloha Stadium’s football field — in the stream and along its earthen banks. The fill extended across the stream’s entire 99-foot width for the uppermost 210 feet of the stream.
The remaining 2,710 overtime hours were spent on related Mailiili Stream work. Those reports included less specific descriptions such as “Mailiili channel clearing,” “Mailiili concrete rubble,” and “Mailiili stream maintenance,” but occurred during the same time frame and included many of the same 50 employees.
In total, the Road Division approved at least 823 overtime shifts for the stream work, ranging from as little as an hour and a half to 14 hours in length. Workers were paid varying hourly rates depending on the work performed, according to a written response by the department’s Acting Director Keoki Miyamoto.
“For example, if a laborer was assigned to drive a truck … he would be paid at the rate of a heavy truck driver rather than a laborer,” according to Miyamoto.
14 Employees Were Top Earners
Over the 15-month period, 14 employees out of the 50 who earned overtime logged more than 100 hours each for the work. Three workers earned more than 300 hours each in overtime.
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A district superintendent earned 362 hours of overtime, most of it at an hourly rate of $67. He also earned $71 and $80 an hour for some of the work. The city provided only a range when asked for the employee’s salary: between $48,048 and $73,968 annually.
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A heavy truck driver, with a base salary of $39,972, logged 307 hours at rates of $32, $49 and $57 an hour. That means the worker earned at minimum $9,824 in overtime pay, and as much as $17,499.
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A road construction and maintenance supervisor earned 303 hours at hourly rates of $42, $62, $65 and $66. The employee’s base salary is between $50,520 and $55,788.
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A road construction equipment operations supervisor logged 256 hours at $53 per hour — or $13,568 worth of overtime pay. That’s on top of the employee’s annual salary, which is between $59,592 and $65,784.
Other top earners included a laborer who earned 258 hours in overtime at rates of $27, $41 and $51 an hour on top of his annual salary of $34,164. And a construction equipment operator, who earns a salary of $44,544, worked 205 hours of overtime at rates of $36, $55 and $58 an hour.
| Employee Position | Overtime Hours for Stream Work |
|---|---|
| District Road Maintenance Superintendent | 361.5 |
| Road Construction and Maintenance Supervisor | 302.5 |
| Heavy Truck Driver | 307 |
| Road Construction Equipment Operations Supervisor | 256 |
| Laborer | 258 |
| Construction Equipment Operator | 205 |
| Utility Worker | 171.5 |
| Construction Equipment Operator | 171.5 |
| Heavy Truck Driver | 170 |
| Heavy Truck Driver | 165.5 |
| Heavy Truck Driver | 161.5 |
| Heavy Truck Driver | 142 |
| Laborer | 129.5 |
| Construction Equipment Operator | 109.5 |
Civil Beat is not naming the employees at this time because the focus of this investigation is city oversight of overtime and projects, not the authorized actions of individuals.
$1.13M Contract to Clean Up Stream
The dumping first came to light in June 2009 when an environmental group reported the activity to the city. EnviroWatch Inc. said city whistleblowers had tipped them off.
Jeoffrey Cudiamat, who resigned in October as director of the city’s Department of Facility Maintenance, said the stream was not being used as a dumpsite.
In an [pdf] detailing cleanup plans, Cudiamat said the concrete rubble was put into the stream to create a makeshift access road along its bank “so that heavy machinery could easily enter and exit the area to remove vegetation as part of a flood control project.”
Still, the city’s reasoning doesn’t explain why workers had filled the entire width of the stream.
The Mailiili Drainage Channel is a navigable body of water and regulated under the federal and . Those laws prohibit the placement of dredged or fill materials into wetlands, rivers, streams and other waters of the United States without a permit from the .
In June 2009, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a notice of unauthorized activity to the city. The following month, the ordered the city to remove the dumped material and restore the stream bed and banks.
Miyamoto said the city has contracted Honolulu-based for $1.13 million “to perform the removal and cleanup.” He said the cleanup is expected to start before the end of the year.
The in September 2009 fined the city $1.7 million for not having the proper permits or approvals for the dumping. The city appealed the fine to get it waived or reduced, but the Health Department upheld the order in October 2010. The city has the option to take the case to state court.
Coming Wednesday: Several workers in Honolulu’s Road Division claimed overtime twice on the same day for different jobs performed at overlapping times.
