Despite Furloughs, Overtime Down in Most City Departments
CORRECTED 4/22/11 3:08 p.m. An earlier version of this story reversed overtime totals for the Emergency Services and Enterprise Services departments. Enterprise Services paid $389,139 in the time period examined. Emergency Services paid $2.6 million.
Mayor Peter Carlisle eliminated furloughs for city workers in his 2012 budget. But he did so without knowing how much the city spent on overtime on furlough days.
As we were told by Jim Fulton in Carlisle’s office: “We do maintain the information, we just don’t have the ability to retrieve it.”
So we decided to look at overall overtime use at the city during the first six months of furloughs, compared to the same period of time in previous years.
Through public records Civil Beat obtained, we found overtime use has actually gone down overall.
The city paid employees $24.5 million in overtime during the first half of this fiscal year, July 1, 2010 to December 31, 2010. Despite 12 mandatory furlough days in that span, that’s less than the city paid in overtime during the same period in 2009 and 2008.
Between July 2009 and December 2009, city workers racked up $25.4 million of overtime pay. During the same period during 2008, they tallied $30.4 million. Most departments cut down on their overtime, even as workers had to complete the same tasks during work months made shorter by furloughs. But the following nine departments saw their overtime use increase this year:
- Honolulu Police Department: $9.8 million
- Department of Environmental Services: $5.0 million
- Enterprise Services Department: $389,1391
- Department of Information Technology: $104,096
- Mayor’s Office: $27,845
- Department of Emergency Management: $21,111
- Department of Human Resources $14,061
- Department of Community Services: $13,135
- City Clerk’s office: $52,802
Not all of the departments who cost the city the most in overtime trended up. The four departments that paid the most overtime in the first half of 2010 are as follows:
- Honolulu Police Department: $9.8 million
- Department of Environmental Services: $5.0 million
- Honolulu Fire Department: $4.9 million
- Department of Emergency Services: $2.6 million1
Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle says reducing overtime is key to keeping the cost of city operations down, and has said furlough days were “invented by the devil.”
